


The Whole World Is Moving (And I'm Standing Still)

by theladyingrey42



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Amnesia, BAMF!Coulson (eventually), Fix-It, Fury lies, Get Together, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mind Control, Phil Clarkson, Pining, Post-Movie(s), Self-Destructive Behavior, a thousand paper cranes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:35:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyingrey42/pseuds/theladyingrey42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson dreams of kissing Clint, and Phil Clarkson dreams he is Phil Coulson, and every time the dream recedes, he feels a little more ragged, a little more torn around the edges.</p><p>Phil Coulson's life is perfect and full and meaningful. Phil Coulson's life makes sense.</p><p>But the sun rises. The sun always rises, and Phil Coulson fades away beneath the light. Dissipates 'til he is smoke and ash on Phil Clarkson's tongue.</p><p>Phil Clarkson starts another day, and it is shivering with electric blue, and none of it makes sense.</p><p>And Clint Barton…Clint Barton just wants the man he loves back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I never meant to write a Clint/Coulson fix-it, but this one idea just wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> Title from World Spins Madly On by The Weepies.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Implications of mental manipulation / memory alteration.

"Next?"

Phil Clarkson hears the woman, sees the opening at the cashier, but there's a moment—a lilting vertigo and a flashing at the corner of his vision. Static in the air.

Ghosts. Always ghosts.

"Sir?"

The very word sends shivers down his spine.

He shakes it off and steps forward, giving the barista an apologetic smile. She returns it, but it's tinged with wariness. To avoid her gaze, he scans the menu, not that he needs to. "Large Americano and a…" … _medium caramel mocha with extra whipped cream…_ "…and…" The wave sweeps over him again. He puts a hand on the counter and blinks. He just needs one coffee. Just one. "Sorry." He swipes a hand across his brow. "Never mind. Just the Americano."

She's giving him that look again. "Sure thing."

He nods and hands her the exact change, then moves to drop a dollar in her tip jar. He always does, no matter which coffee shop he goes to. It's a compulsion.

Before the dollar leaves his hand, his fingers make quick work of it, teasing and folding to make an origami sculpture of bird. The same as always. And he doesn't know why.

She smiles her thanks, and he backs away to stand amidst the others, all waiting. Waiting. He tenses and has to force himself to relax. More than ever, more than usual, he feels like he's _waiting_.

"Large Americano."

He retrieves his drink and takes a sip, and it tastes like sitting in a diner, exhausted and covered in dirt, suit ripped and blood in his mouth. Like warm blue eyes and—

Splitting pain shoots through the space between his eyes.

He needs to go, needs to get to his class, but he's not going to make it to the door. Years of training— _when did he train?_ —help him keep it together as he staggers to a table.

It hurts. It always hurts, and why can't he just remember?

Why can't he remember anything about his life?

The seat on the other side of the table pulls out, a motion so quiet and smooth Phil wouldn't even notice it, but before he can stop himself, his leg is kicking out, his hand reaching for the inside of his coat, but instead of steel, there's only air. There's pain and pressure on his ankle, and a click.

He knows that sound.

And he knows those eyes. Those blue, blue eyes.

A hundred flashes, and the scent of gunpowder and a memory of warmth, hands on his shoulder when he was bleeding, _Coulson, fuck it, don’t you dare leave me,_ and the twang of a bowstring in the early morning air.

Too much. Too _much_.

Phil tries to look away, but the hand on the side of his face holds him steady.

A voice like a dream, like every dream, pierces the air. "Phil."

It sounds like a dream.

He blinks.

The world resolves itself again. Phil looks into blue eyes and doesn't recognize them, and everything is cold.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Do I know you?"

That's what his mouth says, but deep inside, he's sobbing, _It's you, it's you, you found me_.

A burst of fire in his brain, a crackle of electric blue. And everything goes white.

…

_One year earlier…_

Phil opens his eyes for the very first time to find himself surrounded by white. Faint beeping undercuts the rasp of his breath; a fog in his mind shades the ache in his chest.

"Clint?" he says.

He closes his eyes again, a sharper pain hovering just behind his brows.

His lips know how to make that word but he doesn't… He doesn't know a Clint. He doesn't know…anything.

A sensation, like water closing over his head.

Footsteps ring out on linoleum, and he fights the weight to blink his eyes open again. A kindly face is staring down at him, and everything in him goes wary. Tension coils tight in limbs, an instinct to jump. Fifteen objects all within his reach he could use to kill a man, but…but a weary weakness overpowers him.

"You must have me on the good drugs," he slurs.

The face smiles at him. "Do you know where you are?"

It's a pretty easy bit of deductive reasoning. He opens his mouth, begins to say 'medical' but stops himself in time. "Hospital?" The word feels strange, but it's probably the right one.

"Very good. Do you remember what happened?"

There are flashes, green eyes and blue eyes and the blue is all wrong. All wrong.

More blue. Shimmering, shining, electrical blue.

Blue inside his veins and in his heart.

"I…" Pain blooms, and all the flashes slip away. "No?"

Something in the face relaxes. "Do you know your name?"

"Phil." He stops himself. "I think."

"Very, very good. Well, Mr. Clarkson. You've had a nasty accident, but I think you're going to be just fine."

Clarkson. Clarkson. He lets that roll around in his head for a second, winces, bracing, but there's no pain.

Clarkson. It doesn't feel right, doesn't feel as right as his first name. But it's close. It's close to…something.

"For now, though, you should rest."

More beeping, and then a warmth inside Phil's veins. He lets his eyes fall closed.

There's a memory of a hand on his. A hand he knows—a hand that _should_ be here but isn't.

In the darkness, it slips away.

…

The second time Phil wakes, it's with a name on his lips, but he can't quite find the shape of it, can't push past the desert in his mouth or the clouds in his mind. He swallows, and it tastes like medicine and dried blood and dust. His ribs ache.

"Good morning."

It's a woman standing over him this time, the scrubs and smile both implying 'nurse'. He works his throat and swipes a parched tongue over cracking lips.

"Here." She puts a plastic straw to his mouth, and he takes a sip.

Relief floods him, and he turns his head, looking for the figure that should be there, but it's just an empty chair. He closes his eyes.

He stays lucid longer this time, long enough for the nurse to fuss over him and for everything to hurt. He sits up a little and stares at a television in the corner. It's bad reality TV, and he has a passing familiarity with the characters.

He doesn't recognize his name, but he remembers this. (Of all things, he remembers _this_?)

Alone in the room again, he grits his teeth against the pain to reach toward the tray beside his bed. He doesn't take his gaze off the television, but his fingers grip a piece of paper someone left there. He folds and creases, a motion that's automatic, that's comforting in its familiarity. He sets the folded shape aside and drifts.

Later, he looks over to see a paper bird beside his plastic cup.

He made that. He did.

He stares at it until the darkness falls again, and his sleeping tastes of azure blue.

…

The third time he wakes it's to a woman straddling his chest.

"What—"

She's black leather and a uniform, a speaker in her ear, dark hair slicked severely to her skull. His hands come up, and everything hurts, but there's strength there. He twists a wrist and sees an echo of electric blue protruding from his chest.

His own arm hits the pillow beneath his head, and then there's movement.

A needle in his throat.

Everything goes white.

…

The fourth—third (it's only the third—he doesn't remember—) time he wakes up, the doctor's back again.

His face is pinched. "Do you know where you are?"

"Hospital."

Phil's voice is slurred, but the answers come more easily this time.

"Your name?"

"Phil…Clarkson." It still doesn't fit the shape in his mind, not quite right, but it's a closer thing, the mismatched edges easier. Less sharp.

It doesn't hurt, so it must be fine.

He thinks, _it must be mine._

"Do you remember what happened?"

The flashes come, but they are duller, all easily encapsulated in a single word. "Accident."

"That's right."

Over the next few days, they tell him more about the accident, about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. An explosion and shrapnel and a puncture wound in his chest. Five surgeries. A lack of oxygen inside his brain.

Amnesia.

They give him documents that look almost right, tell him he was just about to start a new job teaching military history at a community college.

"Military?" he asks. "Is that? Am I…?"

"Yes. We believe so. Though your records are sealed."

All his records are sealed.

Things are…all right. And if he sometimes has flashes of warm blue eyes, of stabbing pain between his ribs, of a woman attacking him in his hospital bed…if he looks to an empty chair expecting someone… Well.

He drifts, and he accepts, and while he lies there, drugged and aching, his fingers flex around napkins and charts and prescription pads. They fold and fold and fold. A thousand birds. A thousand birds.

He's still waiting for one to fly home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: alcohol abuse, self-destructive behavior and mild violence.

Four days. They don't tell Clint for _four fucking days_.

He nurses his knuckles and sits back in the corner of his room (not his cell, Fury had assured him of that a half dozen times. "It's not a cell, Barton. It's just someplace for you to calm the fuck down so we can monitor you and make absolutely certain—"

"What?" Clint had asked. "That I'm not still a flying monkey?"

Yeah, Cap had told him about that.)

In the end, it's Cap they sent to talk to him, to tell him.

"I'm sorry, Clint, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but—"

"Just spit it out."

And Cap looked at him. "Coulson's dead."

Clint doesn't remember a whole lot after that. He's pretty sure he kept it together until Cap left, but now he's here in the corner, on the floor because there's nowhere high to be in this fucking cell. His knuckles are bruised and scraped to hell, and the one wall is a tiny bit worse for the wear.

And he's alone. For the first time since Coulson brought him in, spoke into his ear, gave him that first, faint nod of approval when he took a target down with one steady shot…Clint's alone.

Everything feels wrong. He sits on the floors and rubs his bruises. He rubs his chest.

Loki stole Clint's heart and put a hole in Phil's. He made Clint _help him_ put a hole in Phil's.

The next time Fury comes to say it'll be just a little longer, Clint doesn't argue and doesn't fight.

He stares at the wall and wishes everything would go white.

…

Clint's quarters smell like Phil. He was never really there, but he lingers on Clint's clothes and in his head. In the half-dozen books Phil gave to Clint, the ones he cast aside, tossing them in Clint's general direction as if they didn't matter. But Phil never did anything that didn't matter, that wasn't calculated, and Clint doesn't keep things, but he's kept those.

There's the one Phil read on a stakeout one night, the one with blood spattered on its cover from when the mission went south, when someone sold them out and the target almost got the jump on them. It's Phil's blood.

Phil's blood is on everything.

Clint pulls out a novel at random, one with gaps in its spine, and he flips it open.

It smells like nights on roofs and bad coffee and the cold. Like that night they sat together, huddled close because it was fucking freezing, and with his gloves on, Clint showed Phil how to make a jumping paper frog and then a boat and then a crane. They ripped up half a book, and then Phil was sitting there, the crane in the palm of his hand and breath brilliant white against the night. He'd turned to Clint, said he'd read about these, once, when he was stationed in Japan. Some myth about how a thousand of them could heal a heart.

Clint had wanted to ask Phil if his was broken, but he hadn't wanted to know. Not for sure.

He'll never know.

He'll never know, and it never happened—this thing they were always on the precipice of but never jumped forward into, not even when Phil was so close, his breath on Clint's face… It had never been the time, always too much of a risk, always too uncertain.

Clint's even less certain now.

He lets the book fall and he goes to the footlocker at the end of his bed and drags the bourbon out.

It burns and it burns, and when it's empty, the glass glitters like diamonds, like light, like the look in Phil's blue eyes.

It glitters like things that got control of Clint, like the magic in his veins when he took those agents' lives.

It shatters on the floor, just like Clint's life. Just like Clint's stupid, wasted life.

…

"Hmm."

Clint opens his eyes and stares, blinks hard a couple time before he's shutting them again.

"Go away."

Glass crunches under expensive shoes. "You wound me." Stark's voice lilts upwards, and why the hell does he think Clint is going to listen to him?

Natasha's come and gone and come and gone; even Fury's been by, not to mention Cap and Sitwell. Clint's ignored them all.

"You know," Stark says. "It's not like I can really judge, considering—hypocrisy and all—but self-destruction isn't really a good look on you. I would have expected recklessness on missions, sure, maybe a little retail therapy, God knows you could stand some. But this? I mean, I'm not judging, but it seems…beneath you."

Clint looks up to find Stark gesturing expansively and yet dismissively, all at the same time. He runs a finger along the spine of a book, and Clint's stomach turns.

Stark scowls. "Are you going to hurl? Because if you are—you know, I should go. Unless you need someone to hold your hair?"

It would be a relief right now, to be sick. To get some of this out of him, both the booze and the bile. And maybe something more.

Clint shakes his head and leans back harder against the wall.

"Good. I guess. Anyway…"

"Are you here for a reason?"

"Actually, I am. Much as I love seeing your…face."

Clint rolls his eyes behind his lids.

Stark keeps prattling on. "See, the thing is, the team—apparently we're a team now, did you get that memo? Steve said he'd tell you, but. Well. Not the point. We're all moving into Avengers Tower. Formerly Stark Tower, but there have been renovations. New management. Demolition courtesy of Norse gods."

Clint looks up. "You're asking me to move in with you?" A ghost of a smile tugs at the corner of his lips, and he'd forgotten what that was like. "I haven't even put out yet."

"Not an image I needed. And not one my boyfriend—person—" Stark shrugs. "Steve would not approve. New leaf and all. Monogamy. You know how it is."

Groaning, Clint rubs the heel of his hand into his eye socket. Because Cap and Stark? That was not an image he needed either. "Your point?"

"Don't really have one. Just, if you want to, there's a room for you. Plenty of booze. No eye-patched babysitters to give you shit if you want to keep going the way you are. Though I warn you, Natasha's already living there, and Steve has a…a thing. About killing yourself with alcohol and bad decisions. Apparently it's not something he approves of. Don't ask me how I know."

"I won't."

Clint looks around the shell of his life here, at the broken bottle and the empty ones. The paperback novels and the way Phil's still hovering. Still everywhere.

He doesn't want to forget, doesn't want to lose that, but it never happened.

There's nothing to lose. Just a could-have-been-but-never-will-be.

Just him.

Clint closes his eyes again, and when he nods it thumps his head against the wall.

"Yeah," Clint says. "Yeah. I could do that."

"Good." Stark's voice is audibly uncomfortable, but he clears his throat, and the waver is gone. "I'd send a car for your things, but…"

"No need. I can carry them."

He takes everything he needs in one bag.

And it all still smells like Phil.

…

"If he were here, he'd kick your ass, you know."

Natasha doesn't even have to say his name.

Clint chuckles darkly and takes another pull at his drink.

"He's not, though, is he?"

He's not, he's not, he's not.

…

"Agent Barton. Take the shot."

Oh, God. The voice is in Clint's ear; he's heard those words before, but not from this voice. His hand is shaking so hard the bowstring seems set to break, and he can't hear, can't see, can't breathe.

Months and months have passed, but it's his first mission out since…since, and he's sober, but everything's wrong.

"Agent Barton."

"Fuck this."

He trades the arrow out for one with an expanding grappling hook on the end, and even trembling, he's still Hawkeye. He can still hit the broad side of a barn—or the roof of a building. The air sings with the shot, and it goes a little wide, but it still hooks on. He tugs on it once to test the hold, then swings out, follows the rope down. The fibers tear his hands up, but he can scarcely feel it. He lands on the shoulders of the man he was supposed to shoot, and his goons are all around.

His hands aren’t shaking so much that he can't pull an arrow loose, can't shove it deep between ribs. Everything goes into motion at once, and there's that wrong (wrong, _wrong_ ) voice in his ear, cursing, and a flash of red hair, Natasha's own muffled litany of Russian profanity. Arms are wrapping around him, and Clint knocks elbows into windpipes, works in synchronicity with Natasha's deadly form at his side. The bones of a man's face crunch against his fist, and one of his fingers gives, but he hardly feels a thing. He takes as many blows as he delivers, and it feels _good_. It feels like being alive.

Because he's still alive. He is, and he doesn't deserve to be.

"Hawkeye!"

The hands on his shoulders this time are different, and he still tries to shake them off, but he knows. Natasha pins him down, and his temple impacts with concrete. His vision goes red, but he can still see. The bodies of the men they were instructed _not_ , under any circumstances, to engage, are littered across the sidewalk, and there are pedestrians and cameras. The target is out, though, and that's the most important thing. He did his job.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Natasha hisses.

He laughs and tastes blood, and his muscles are all still shaking.

"I didn't have the shot." The confessions seeps through him, and it's cold and aching. "I didn't have the shot."

He's never, ever, ever not had the shot.

"Jesus Christ."

Things happen fast after that, people in black body suits and people in normal suits, and they're all cleaning up after Clint's fucking mess. Natasha lets him go, and he sits on the pavement, alone and still unsteady and cold. A blanket wraps around his shoulders, and he stares off into the distance.

He doesn't know how to do this.

"Come on."

Clint gets pushed into a Med-evac, and he lets the medics prod at him with a docility that's probably going to get him more raised eyebrows than anything else. He should be fighting, should be threatening anyone who tries to get a needle in his arm, but he doesn't have anything left to fight with.

He doesn't have anything.

As they push through the city streets, siren blaring, he drifts, gaze wandering and aimless and unfocused.

Until suddenly he's focusing. He's focusing so fucking hard.

He sits up ramrod straight, the IV pulling from his arm, and someone's shouting, telling him to lie back down. He's already on his feet, though, already pushing past whoever's trying to get him back down, and there's this roaring in his ears.

With everything a blur, he manages to hide it, but just. He fakes taking a blow to the kidney and collapses on himself, but he's really crouching, really reaching taped-up fingers into the space beneath the gurney, between one box of medical supplies and another. His fingertips close around paper, and he shoves it into the pocket with the hidden zipper at his thigh.

It's not until he's closed into a bathroom back at SHIELD, having pissed everyone off enough to leave him alone for five fucking minutes, god damn it, when he reaches for it.

The shaking is of an entirely different kind this time.

His back to the camera in the corner, he pulls out the folded-up piece of paper. He stares at it until his eyes threaten to cross. And his mouth _hurts_ , it aches with the force of his smile.

It's a paper crane.

He's holding in his hand a goddamned paper crane.

And Clint feels hopeful for the first time since the end of his entire world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: More mental fuckery. Mild violence.

Six months in, and Phil Clarkson's life has a routine.

He wakes up in his apartment all alone and stares at the ceiling, feeling wrong inside his skin but too tired and sore to care. He runs two miles on his treadmill, is edging up toward three now that his lung is mostly healed. There's a blue pill and a white pill—one for the constant headache and one for his…depression.

He showers and jerks off and doesn't think of anyone in particular, just calloused, masculine hands. He dresses in a suit, and he goes to any one of a dozen different coffee shops, looking for something, but it's always just beyond his sight. Always in the distance.

Like a ghost.

In front of his class, he is all wry humor and crisp efficiency. The students don't love him, but he thinks they probably respect him, and that's all he's ever asked of them. All he's ever asked of anyone.

He eats lunch alone in the faculty cafeteria. Every now and then Sharon-something from the English department asks if she can join him, and they make small talk that barely skims the surface. There's something about the way she looks at him, though, something searching in her gaze. It makes him uneasy, makes his muscles tense.

He folds birds, and when he clears his tray away, he leaves them.

At night, he goes to diners, goes to all kinds of different places, and it's just like the coffee shops. He prefers routine, but a compulsion deep in his bones says he needs to go places, needs to be seen.

After a while, he figures it's because if someone sees him, maybe it proves that he's alive.

Late at night, he climbs the stairs of his apartment building and he sits up on the roof. Even when it's cold, he goes. He holds his Starkphone in his hand (the 'Stark' part covered up with tape because the word prompts a headache) and he takes pictures of himself. In different angles and different lights. Sometimes he sends them to himself. There's no one else to send them to.

Maybe it's just another way of being seen.

At night he drinks a glass of milk and takes the blue pill and the white pill and a little grey capsule that's supposed to help him sleep.

He doesn't dream.

…

"You're up to seventy-five percent lung capacity." The doctor nods at the readout on the instrument and makes a note on Phil's chart. "Considering the nature and severity of the injury, that's quite good. Better than expected, honestly."

Phil stays quiet. It's itchy and vulnerable, there in his underwear and a paper gown. He's up to four miles on his runs, and he's started in on some weights, though he hasn't mentioned that. Being strong seems…important. Keeping his growing strength to himself seems even more so.

"Any lingering discomfort?"

Touching his ribs, Phil shrugs. There are so many ways to answer that. His ribs still feel tight sometimes, and there's a soreness when it rains.

But those aren't the only kinds of discomfort. There's the seasick feeling when he looks at or touches the scars, the bone-deep one when he looks at his _life_.

He's fine. Settling in, doing the best he can, but nothing is _comfortable_. Nothing at all.

"Nothing I can't handle."

"And the headaches?"

"Occasional and controllable."

"Good." Another note on the chart. "We'll keep you on the same dosage if it's effective." He doesn't look up, but his one eyebrow rises. "Still getting out of bed okay?"

Because there had been days when he hadn't. Back at the beginning.

"Yeah. It's fine. Sleep's okay, too."

It's deep and black and empty, and he doesn't feel more rested at the end of it. But that's par for the course these days with things that are 'okay'.

The doctor lifts his head and smiles. "Keep steady with the medication then. Give a call if anything changes or if you notice anything…off." A tic in his eye makes Phil tense, but Phil keeps his expression the same. Calm. Cool. "Bad dreams or memories or anything."

"Right."

"Good. We'll see you in another eight weeks, then."

The doctor holds his hand out, and Phil shakes it, but he can't shake the feeling that something just happened.

That there's something the doctor isn't telling him.

On the way out, on a hunch, Phil pauses at the check-out station. "Any chance I could get a copy of my records?" The lie comes out, smooth and casual as can be. "A friend of mine recommended a specialist, and I was thinking I might check them out."

The nurse's smile falters, but she recovers quickly. "We don't store them all on site, Mr. Clarkson. But if you fill out this form, we can mail them to you."

"Excellent."

As he fills it out, he wonders why he never did seek a second opinion. Why he never even looked into doctors closer to his home. He just took the names that were given to him.

About everything.

Doctors. Job. Apartment.

His heart starts racing, and his head has the subtle flare of an on-coming attack, but he fills out the forms all the same. He smiles and passes them over, then heads home.

By the time the sick part of the headache hits him, he's already in bed, in his room in the dark. He wretches, but it's only partly the pain.  There's more to it. So much more.

But he can't find it.

…

Two weeks later, he receives the notice from the hospital, stating that his records from the time of his hospitalization have been lost. That they regret the error.

He folds the form letter up and stares at it for hours.

…

Three days later, he finds a form letter folded into a crane on his table, and he can't remember what it is.

He throws it away.

…

Nine months in, and Phil is out of milk.

He stares at the empty carton for a minute, watches the last drops dribble into the almost-empty glass. It's ten o'clock and time to take the blue pill and the white pill and the little grey capsule that's supposed to help him sleep.

And it's such an insignificant thing. Just milk, and how could he have forgotten to get more? He presses his palms to the counter and hangs his head. He just has to keep it together, just has to…

He feels like a ragged edge, like something unraveling, and the loose threads have been pulling for months now, no stitches left. Tug once more on the end and it's going to go to pieces. It is. _He_ is.

It's such an insignificant thing, but routine is all he has now, and he's stuck between two different ways of breaking it.

In the end, he dons his coat and stuffs his feet into sneakers. He grabs his wallet and his keys. It's just a short walk down to the gas station on the corner. Just a block, and then he'll be back here and he'll have his glass of milk and take his pills. He'll follow orders.

(Orders. Orders. What orders?)

The girl behind the counter at the gas station is filing her nails as he walks in. They make eye contact for a second, he nods, and then he wanders to the back of the store.

He has the half gallon container in his hand and is just about to turn around when he gets this feeling at the back of the neck. Prickling. It's familiar and foreign all at once, and he doesn’t have time to so much as think about it before he's ducking down, dropping the milk and reaching for a couple glass bottles at the bottom of the refrigerator case.

"Open up the cash register. Nice and slow."

Phil doesn't think, he doesn't think he doesn't think he doesn't think.

The cashier is still stammering out her acquiescence, and Phil is peering around the aisle, taking stock. Two men, ski masks. A rifle and a handgun and the bulk under a coat points to more concealed arms. The cash register opens with a chime, and Phil is in motion.

He is nothing but motion.

The first bottle flies through the air, and there's a resounding crack with skull. Before the man can even double over, Phil flings the second bottle, catches the other man in the back, between his shoulder blades. Phil's running down the aisle, and his lungs hurt but he feels _alive_.

(Crackling, glistening, electric living _blue_.)

When he grabs for the bag of flour and rips it open with his hands, white powder everywhere, the burst of pain behind Phil's eyes staggers him.

And he's too slow. Just a little too slow.

The bullet hits him in the fleshy part of his arm, nothing insurmountable. He taps his ear and is calling out a sitrep before his fingers can connect with the complete lack of an earpiece. He leaps and his foot catches the barrel of the gun, the other breaks the man's wrist. Phil kicks the gun to the side, and then he's on the only man left standing, banging forehead to counter and pushing the limp body away.

Phil's ready for more, has his hands in fighting position in front of him, but when he looks around, both men are on the ground, both disarmed.

He smiles at the shaking cashier.

Everything hurts, his head and his arm and his lungs, but the adrenaline is still spiking, the rush of doing _something_ burning like fire in his veins. His hands feel steadier than they have in months. Like he has something to hold on to. Like he's _found_ something.

Through the rush and haze, he goes to the back of the store to retrieve his milk, and on an impulse, on the way he grabs two packs of donuts.

He has exactly thirty seconds between setting them all on the counter and the moment when the pain bursts like a supernova in his skull.

His legs give out, and he's looking at the laid out bodies of unconscious men, and his hands are empty. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, what he is.

Every muscle in his body spasms.

In the last second before the whiteness overtakes his vision, he mumbles, "Clint…"

And he'll laugh about it later, if he can remember it. But for a moment, he half expects an arrow to come sailing through the glass.

…

It doesn't.

…

The visit to the hospital is nothing like it was the last time. Being vaguely conscious probably has something to do with it. The police and the ambulances are on the scene within minutes. Lights are shined in Phil's eyes, and he attempts to debrief, but the brilliance of the headache this time is making it difficult to see. A medic breaks in and corrals him onto a gurney where she shakes her head at him and his stubbornness.

"Ex-military?"

"So I'm told."

She passes it off as a smart-alec remark and works on getting pressure on his arm. "Exit wound is clean, so you probably won't need surgery."

Phil just nods.

Tsking him, she secures a bandage. "Sounds like you were some kind of a hero back there."

In and amidst the static rushing through his skull, he sees a flash of red, white and blue. "Real Captain America, huh?"

His throat gets tangled on the words. They should be natural, he collected those cards the whole time when he was a child, even as an adult, and—

He falls off the gurney and clutches his head. The medic is beside him, hand on his good shoulder, and he waves her away, barely breathing, gasping and choking on bile. "It's fine," he manages. "Headaches. Migraines." That's what they said to call them, even if it isn't technically true. The symptoms are enough the same.

She's calling over his head, "We got any Demerol?"

"No." Phil clutches at her uniform. "No Demerol. Already on medications. Need to take them."

The glass of milk and the blue pill and the white pill and the little grey capsule.

An exchanging of glances over his head.

"We'll try to get your records. Anyone else we need to contact? Any friends? Family?"

And there's a name. A name. The world spins, and the name fades away in a sea of blue.

"No," he chokes out. "No one."

_No one has found me, I'm lost, I'm lost, why hasn't he found me?_

"Okay, come on. Up, up."

They get him back onto the gurney and loaded into the ambulance. He puts a blanket over his eyes to block the light, but there's nothing to protect him from the siren's screaming. He huddles up into a ball.

"We'll be there soon, sir. Just hold on."

He gets out just one word. "Paper?"

A couple sheets are pressed into his hands, and they make him steadier. The pain is just as bad, but as he folds and folds and folds, he has control.

It's only over a tiny little thing, but he has control.

…

Everything after that's a blur of pain and pea-green rooms, white sheets and a drop ceiling. The hospital's having trouble finding his records, but they're working on it, can he remember his doctor's name? His number?

Phil passes them his wallet before falling back prone onto his cot. They stitch him up and give him morphine, and he wants to ask for his pills, but he can't speak.

"Shh. You're doing fine. Just sleep."

So he does.

And for the first time in his life, Phil Clarkson dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Clint left a paper crane for Coulson to find, it was back before they met a Norse god. Back before they had to wrangle Tony Stark, before they recovered a supersoldier from the ice. Back before Natasha, even.

In those days, it was just Phil and him.

Clint had been in an impossible spot, left to hang by a triple-agent, and with time running out and his cover blown, Clint had made a call. He'd let himself be captured and done his best to leave a trail for SHIELD to follow, starting with a paper crane made from an incident report he'd never gotten around to filling out. He'd folded it with freezing fingers, with the triple-agent coming up the stairs, followed by goons. He'd tucked it in between the bricks.

It had meant he was okay, that he could handle this. That he knew Phil would come for him, and he'd be waiting.

The first time Coulson had left one for Clint, Coulson had been the one who'd been compromised. Rather than captured, he'd had to retreat into deep, deep cover, no contact with the outside world. Clint had been out of his mind, trying to track their leads and shake down sources, prepared to jeopardize the whole mission if he had to.

Clint still has the crane he found atop the mailbox outside of headquarters the following day. The one that meant Phil was okay, he was doing fine. That Clint just had to keep his cool and hold on. Follow orders and see the op out to its end.

Clint has no idea what the crane in his hands now means.

But he holds onto it, even as he's carted off to medical and poked at. Even as Fury screams at him about the fucked-up op, and Clint wants to scream back, wants to call him a liar and a thief, wants to put an arrow through his heart so it will bleed and bleed and bleed.

But he doesn't.

Instead, he just sits there with his hand in his pocket. He holds this crane between his forefinger and his thumb. He holds onto the spark of hope and keeps it safe.

And with a breath of life, it sets his heart aflame.

…

The entire week he's stuck in medical and in debriefings, Clint tries to come up with a Plan. There have been times, over these months and months and months, when Clint has imagined Phil could still be alive, but he's never really given into it. It's seemed too masochistic. Too painful.

Besides, deep down, in the parts of his heart that had hurt the most, he'd recognized that if Phil was hiding, he didn't want to be found. Not by Clint. Not by anyone.

Now, he's not so sure.

He has to be sure.

So he schemes.

The problems, as he sees them, fall into two broad categories:

One, Clint doesn't really have anything to go on. A paper crane found in an ambulance is hardly concrete evidence, nor is the feeling in his gut.

Two, there aren't many people he can turn to. If SHIELD burned Phil, it's not like Clint can go to Fury or Hill or Sitwell or any of the other high-level agents who might have a clue what's going on. Hell, even though Clint is dying to tell Natasha, she's a company woman these days, silent and loyal. She loves Clint, sure, but she might love the party line more.

He needs someone who distrusts SHIELD as much as he does. Someone who's more than willing to go digging based on a hunch. Someone smart and who has the resources to get inside.

And the minute he puts it that way, Clint hates his life. He hates it very, very much.

…

"Barton." Stark is all casual nonchalance, not even stopping in his manipulations of the glowing blue schematics in the air. But Clint had to run surveillance on him, once, back when Natasha was undercover at Stark Industries. He recognizes the hitch to his shoulders, the little twitch at the corner of his eye. His mouth quirks up. "When did they let you out of the psych ward?"

Clint summons the stillness of the sniper to keep himself from flinching. "I checked myself out."

For the first time, Stark glances away from his holographic display. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Ah. So Stark already knows Clint escaped. Clint shrugs. "It's what I'm calling it."

"Can't say I blame you. I've done a duck and run out of a hospital or two in my day." His one eyebrow rises before settling back down. "Not when I was under armed guard, mind you."

"I appreciate a challenge."

"Clearly, considering the stunt you pulled on the last op."

"I got my target down."

Stark chuffs. "Reckless self-endangerment is kind of my schtick, you know. I don't like people honing in on my turf."

"I don't plan to make a habit of it."

"Glad to hear it. So…" Stark swipes had a hand through the network of blue lines to clear them all away, and then there's nothing between the two of them. Just secrets and air and Stark's crossed arms. His gaze is intense, all of his attention, for once, focused entirely on Clint. "Care to tell me why I shouldn't call Fury and let him know where you are?"

Clint takes a deep breath. "Besides the fact that you hate him?"

His lip quirks up, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Compelling argument. I wouldn't mind a little additional assurance that you're not a danger to yourself or others, though."

"I…" And this is it. The whole reason why he's here. Clint glances back over his shoulder and then around at the corners of the room.

Stark doesn't miss it. "It's just you and me here. Well, you and me and JARVIS, but you can ignore him. Unless you plan on using your freaky ninja assassin skills on me, in which case he's under direct orders to call my boyfriend, who will shove a shield up your ass. Right, JARVIS?"

How can a disembodied AI sounds like it's rolling its eyes? "Couldn't have put it better myself, sir."

"I…" Clint takes a deep breath. He can do this. He has to. "I need help."

There's a long pause. Stark shifts, and his guard drops, if only by a fraction. "I'm listening."

Exhaling roughly, Clint pulls the origami crane from his pocket and sets it in the center of his palm. With his fingers flat, the little bird is on display, all the ragged edges to its tail and wings from where Clint has worried it this week. Stark's gaze darts down to it, and his brow furrows.

"Taking up Japanese paper crafts?"

"I found this. Hidden in the SHEILD ambulance they took me away in after the last mission."

"Okaaaaayyy…"

"I think Coulson left it for me."

That makes Stark stop in his tracks.

Clint takes advantage of the momentary silence and presses his luck. He takes a single step forward and curls his fingers around the crane as he drops his hand down to his side. "I think he's still alive. I think Fury lied."

Another little twitch at the corner of Stark's eye. "You have any evidence to back that up?"

"Besides what I already showed you? Not a drop."

Stark's gaze holds steady for a few seconds, and Clint meets it, chin held high. Inside, he's a mess of desperation. If Stark won't help, he doesn't know what he's going to do.

He'll have to break into SHIELD. Maybe have to call up one of his contacts from before he went straight. He'll have to go this alone, and he spent decades of his life doing everything alone. But he hasn't had to, not in a long, long while.

He's gotten used to it, has come to rely on the people around him.

To go back to having no one now…

The tug at the edge of Stark's mouth is the closest thing to a genuine smile Clint's ever seen the man direct at him. "Well. Let it never be said that I passed up an opportunity to prove Fury a lying liar." He's in motion before he's even finished the sentence, pulling up new, translucent screens in the air. On one of them, Phil's face pops up, and it makes Clint's chest ache.

Code traces down another screen, and there's the SHIELD logo and a skittering of Stark's nimble fingers over the surface of it. He mumbles and mutters. "Facial recognition, full scan of SHEILD files, JARVIS, can you pull up Fury's personal drive? Hill's, too. And all the logs for the medi-vac they had Barton in."

Something deep inside Clint shudders and eases. He didn't realize until just now how much he needed this. He needed hope. He needed _Phil_.

And he needed someone, anyone to believe him.

"Don't worry," Stark says, louder now. "If he's out there…we'll find him."

…

"Barton?"

Clint looks up from his book at the sound of Stark's voice breaking out across the intercom. In the span of an instant, his heart is pounding, all his still-coiled muscles ready to go.

It's been a day and a half. The first few hours, Clint had hung around the workshop, but eventually Stark had all but pushed him out, saying he couldn't get anything done with Clint watching him. Since then, he's been skulking about his room, avoiding Natasha and trying to avoid the circling of his own racing thoughts.

"Stark?" Clint croaks.

"I've got something you're going to want to see."

Clint's out the door by the time Stark finishes the sentence.

Things in the workshop look more or less the same as they did the day before. Phil's picture is still up on one of the screens, and the sight of it still does something to Clint, something he has to ignore for right now.

Stark looks up as Clint makes way over to stand beside him.

"What've you got?"

Stark shoots his gaze skyward. "What haven't I got?" He flicks his fingers over the display a couple times, narrating, talking too fast as he does. "SHIELD's wiped their drives clean. JARVIS is still crunching on the private files, but the official party line is that Phil Coulson is dead."

Clint's stomach goes cold. "Tell me there's a 'but' coming."

" _But_ ," Stark says, and he taps twice more at the corner of the display,"I borrowed SHIELD's algorithm they used to find Loki, the one that grabs images from cell phones and anything else connected to the network. Fixed their shitty facial recognition and added some better pinpoint triangulation." He waves his hand. "Never mind, you weren't there. Too busy being Loki's little helper monkey, I remember. Doesn't matter. Anyway, I found…" Three more taps.

Clint feels like his heart just about stops inside his chest. "That's…"

"Our guy. Alive and well."

Staggering, Clint puts out a hand to rest on the table behind them. He needs something to keep him upright. Because there's not just one image. Not one grainy surveillance cam pic.

There are _hundreds_.

"Tell me what I'm looking at," Clint implores.

"These," Stark says, indicating a small subset, "are all tagged with GPS data centered on a college campus in upstate New York. As you can see, Coulson hasn't given up his suits, but instead of terrorizing the populace, he would appear to be torturing undergraduates."

"He's teaching?"

It seems so…mundane.

And it lends credence to Clint's deep-seated fear that this is Phil's choice. He has a normal life now.

He doesn't need Clint.

Stark scoffs. "Among other things." A few more pictures rise to the forefront and expand.

And there's Phil. The Phil that Clint _knows_ , in action, in the air, disarming masked men with a few well-placed kicks and buying donuts.

And Clint could cry. He really could.

"These," Stark explains, "were taken from a backup of a video surveillance camera at a gas station about five miles from the campus. The main video files were scrubbed clean. No idea why or by whom." The sarcasm is thick, even for Stark. "But once I had a basic geographic area to focus on, I was able to dig a little deeper. Managed to pull these up."

"And the others?" Because these are still only a couple dozen of the hundreds. Because Stark is smirking, and there's more going on than just this. More than Phil living a professor's quiet life and occasionally, when he finds cause to, fighting crime.

There has to be more.

"Ah, now that's where it gets interesting. You see, ninety percent of the images I found are from one cell phone." Stark clears away the photos they've already looked at, leaving hundreds more, but they're all the same. All close-cropped shots of just Phil's face and the tops of his shoulders. "Camera data and the foreshortening of the arm in the foreground," Tony points, "indicate they're self-portraits."

It takes Clint a second. And then another. And then he's on his feet, hand shaking, heart cracking, but instead of breaking apart, it's letting light in.

It's letting so much light and _hope_ in.

"You're telling me…" Clint pauses, closes his eyes and then opens them again. "You're saying Coulson knows about this facial recognition program you're using."

"Check."

"And he's taking pictures of himself."

"Check."

Clint glances at the pictures again, scanning for time and date stamps, and reeling even harder at what he finds. "Every day. He's been taking pictures of himself on a network-enabled device. Every. Day."

"Check."

And Clint can't see anymore, can't see Phil's smile or Phil's eyes, repeated over and over and over on the screen. His voice shatters.

"He's trying to be found," Clint breathes. He reached out and grabs Stark's sleeve, and he could kiss this man. "He's trying to come home."


	5. Chapter 5

It goes like this:

Phil Coulson goes on missions, lives on the end of a com with his eyes on the sky, and when the shit hits the fan, he's right there in the middle of it. He wields a gun too big for him and tells evil it lacks conviction.

Phil Clarkson wakes with an ache in his head and stares up at the ceiling, trying to cling to the remnants of a dream.

Phil Coulson sits across the table from a specialist with dark, short hair and a darker, shorter smile. A man with callouses on his hand from where he draws his arrow across his bow. And Phil Coulson thinks, _maybe_. Phil Coulson thinks he'll keep his asset safe enough, but he'll keep him safer in his heart, and if he's ever allowed to touch…He'll be good to him. He'll be so, so good to him.

Phil Clarkson trudges through his life and eats his lunch with a woman who seems to be trying to look inside him, but it's the way a student looks at a cadaver. Phil Coulson can feel the pins in his wrists and ankles, skewering him to the lab tray's floor.

Phil Clarkson is alone.

Phil Coulson dreams of kissing Clint, and Phil Clarkson dreams he is Phil Coulson, and every time the dream recedes, he feels a little more ragged, a little more torn around the edges.

Phil Coulson's life is perfect and full and meaningful. Phil Coulson's life makes sense.

But the sun rises. The sun always rises, and Phil Coulson fades away beneath the light. Dissipates 'til he is smoke and ash on Phil Clarkson's tongue.

Phil Clarkson starts another day, and it is shivering with electric blue, and none of it makes sense.

Phil Clarkson takes a blue pill and a white pill (and a night a little grey capsule). He raises his glass of milk up to his lips.

He palms the pills.

And with the bathroom door behind him, Phil Clarkson drops them in the toilet.

With a flick of his wrist, he watches them (like his life) spin away.

…

"So, how are you feeling, Mr. Clarkson?"

"Fine," Phil lies.

There's a crackling under his skin and an edge in his mind. A split and a seismic shift, and the ground moves beneath him, threatening to swallow him whole. Like he has one foot on either side of a chasm.

"Medications are still treating you all right? No change in symptoms?" The doctor's pen hovers over the surface of his clipboard, and his left eyebrow is slightly raised.

Phil swallows and forces a smile.

He didn't intend to go off his meds, didn't plan it precisely. But after the incident at the gas station, (how did that happen, how did that happen, who _was_ that?) he was kept overnight at another hospital. One where no one looked at him like he was made of glass.

He didn't take his medications, and the dreams…

Dreams of fighting and connection, of supporting people and working toward _something_. Of rough hands and pulses of energy and eyes. Of a man who saw better from a distance.

A man who saw Phil.

And everything is worse now, everything in his head is such a jumble, but the numb is gone. Phil will take anything, will withstand any amount of shaking and hurting and overwhelming loss if it will keep the numbness at bay.

Phil nods. "Everything seems fine."

The doctor's gaze is narrower, now, and Phil needs to lie better.

"Still some headaches here and there," he confesses (headaches all the time, constantly, but they're worth it, they are), "but I'm sleeping better."

He sleeps like the dead, because in his dreams, he is alive.

Behind the doctor, there's a flicker, like a ghost in the static, and Phil blinks hard. For a second, he sees a fading image of a figure sitting, silent, against the wall.

A bow and arrow in his hands.

Phil blinks again and the figure is gone.

(The air around him shimmers blue.)

The doctor glances over his shoulder, then back at Phil. Shaking his head, Phil smooths his hand over his tie. "Sorry. Thought I saw a spider."

_Or a hawk._

A flash of pain behind his right eye.

"All right." The doctor sounds less placated than usual, but the itch is starting in Phil's hands again. He just needs to keep this up long enough to get out of here, to not arouse suspicions. Once he's gone, he can get back to…

Nothing.

He'll get back to his empty apartment and his empty life and his nothing.

The doctor makes a note on his chart, and his eyes are hiding something. "You're due for a quick blood test while we've got you here. Just want to check your oxygenation levels."

Phil flicks his gaze up to the mirror in the corner of the room. He can almost see the chart in the reflection. Tilting his head to the side, he focuses.

And it doesn't matter that the handwriting is in reverse, Phil can read it plain as can be.

_Test for drug levels. If low / absent, increase dose / implement supervision of regimen?_

Phil puts his hand in his pocket and fiddles with his keys. "You can't just use the spirometer again?" At the look of surprise on the doctor's face, Phil curses himself. (Where did he learn that word?) "The thing you used last time?" He plays dumb and mimics blowing into the tube.

"Well, er, no. That's just lung capacity, I'm interested in how the blood is absorbing it, if…"

Phil's nail beds are a healthy pink. He's getting plenty of oxygen in his blood. His adrenaline spikes, but he's all calm cool, just like he's practiced, spent his whole career (what career?)…

"Actually," he slides off the exam table, "I have a class this afternoon. I'm afraid I have to be going."

The doctor frowns. "I have to insist."

"And I have to insist as well." Phil meets the doctor's gaze. And this is pushing it too far, he's putting too fine a point on it and showing his hand, but he's not going back. Not when he's so close to… _something_. "Or is it not within my rights to decline the test?"

Gritting his teeth, the doctor shows him a fake, fake smile. "Of course you can decline."

And all at once, Phil has a flash of a woman sitting on his chest, of a syringe in his neck and numbness.

Forgetting.

"Next time, then," Phil lies.

"Of course."

…

Phil sleeps with the doors all locked and a chair under the doorknob. A kitchen knife under his pillow.

But it doesn't matter.

The next morning, he wakes in a fog the likes of which he hasn't known since…since…and he curses, wants to vomit.

Wants his life back.

All he wants is his life back.

He skips his breakfast, skips his visit to a coffee shop. Instead, he tears pages from books and makes a hundred paper cranes before he goes to work. The whole way there, he drops them out the window of his car, one at every intersection, and he begs them to fly.

Fly, fly, fly and bring him home.

…

"Hey, Phil."

"Sharon."

"May I?"

Phil's wary, but he doesn't know why. He keeps his expression neutral anyway, and holds out his hand in invitation. She sits across from him, and for a second, he sees two images. The beautiful blonde and a man, a man who used to join him like this, only it was less 'may I?' and more, 'hey, Coulson, so I was thinking, we should' and a body in the chair, sprawled out, in Phil's space, and Phil had wanted…

He had wanted even less space.

He pushes his chair back and works for more, now.

Hands clenched around his silverware, he tilts his head to the side as Sharon arranges items on her tray. "How are you?"

"Fine. You know how it is this time in the semester."

He gives the requisite laugh demanded by social convention, but it's not funny. "Don’t I, though?"

"You look worn out, Phil."

He told the doctor he was sleeping better. He should keep his story straight. Of course he should. "Working hard, I guess."

Her gaze dips down. Her tone is suddenly sharp. "Why do you do that?"

Phil looks down to find his fork beside his plate, and his hands are on the receipt from his lunch. It's already squared off, the corners folded, and he can see the shape of wings and beak lying dormant in the paper. Without knowing what he's doing, he's folding in staccato, three quick folds and three long smoothing motions. Three quick folds again.

No one's ever asked him why he does this. And so he doesn't even have the artifice to lie. "I don't know," he admits. "I just…do it."

He finishes the crane and sets it aside, then picks up his fork again, as casual as he can.

She won't let his non-answer go, though, asks him where he learned to make them, ("A friend taught me, I think. Don't remember his name…"), what they mean, ("There's a story about them healing you, if you make enough of them.")

"Are you sick?"

He is. Sick in his head and in his heart.

He chuckles and shrugs. "You were the one who said I looked worn out."

For the first time, she touches him. Her hand on his hand, and she's stilling him, and God, what is he doing now? Phantom movements and ghosts and…

He hears the echo of the tapping, the rhythm of the end of his fork against the table top, and it's not three short, three long, three short.

It's thirteen. Thirteen taps, and her mask seems to drop away. She's not just neutral Sharon, kind Sharon, the professor who, for some reason wants to talk to him, even though he told her he was gay the first time they met.

There's danger in her eyes, and he glances around. Glances at his chicken, cut in thirteen pieces, his straw wrapper reduced to thirteen little strips of white.

He meets her gaze, and he doesn't know what he's been doing, what that number means or who he is or who she is, but he has to go.

"Sorry," he mumbles. He picks up his tray. "I need to get ready for a class."

_I'll see you later, Agent Thirteen._

He doesn't say it, but it's as if they both hear it in the air, and for a second, he doesn't think she'll let him go. The pain behind his eyes is a screaming, throbbing white. He puts a hand to his temple and hunches over.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. Fine. Just need some air."

After a moment's hesitation, she lets him leave, and he all but runs. At the door, though, he stops.

And he doesn't know why he does it, he doesn't, but he blends himself into the crowd. He lingers. Through a window, he watches Sharon leave, and when she does, he follows her. Somehow, she doesn't notice, and he pulls out every trick he doesn't know to keep her from realizing.

When she stops outside the library, Phil is hidden in a shadow, his heart and head both pounding, and he listens.

She touches her ear. "Sir," she says. "Sir, I think he knows. I think he's remembering."

Phil's blood goes cold.

"Sir, what do you want me to do?"

There's a long moment of silence, and then she closes her eyes. Head back against the wall she says, simply, "Understood."

…

That night, Phil goes up on the roof, just like he always does. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture of himself, but when he sends it, he taps out a message.

It just says, _Help. Please help._

He presses 'send' and stares up at the sky, and it's almost like he wishes satellites would see him, wishes _someone_ would see him.

Glancing back down at the phone, he worries the tape over the logo with his thumb. All this time, spent avoiding pain like lightning in his skull, and he can't avoid everything. He needs to know.

He peels the tape away and forces himself to stare.

STARK

STARK

_STARK_

Flashes of a man with a goatee and glowing blue and shining metal. Red and gold and a horrible bathrobe, and… and…

Phil's brain feels like it will explode, but he presses on. He focuses on the letters, and he sees them on a tower.

He sees red and white and blue and a woman with hair like fire, sees rippling, surging green and a hammer in the sky.

He sees Clint.

Oh, God, he sees Clint.

And then he sees nothing, nothing at all.

…

Phil comes back to himself in his kitchen, staring at a glass of milk, unsure of what is real.

He palms his pills, tucks them in his pocket, and drinks.

…

This is how it goes:

Phil Clarkson goes to sleep at night, and he remembers dreaming, remembers being someone else and loving and maybe, just maybe, being loved. He remembers being invisible and important, and he remembers…he remembers…

Phil Coulson takes a scepter to his heart and collapses on a floor, and Nick Fury tells him they have to do this.

Nick Fury says he's down. He's down.

And he can't get up.

Phil Clarkson wakes and tastes Novocain on his tongue and sees electric blue and soft blue eyes and _blue_.

Phil Clarkson forgets, and he falls apart, and everything hurts, and he needs help. He needs...

Phil Coulson tries to stand.

Phil Clarkson waits.

Phil Clarkson waits.

Phil Clarkson waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting these two in the same room next chapter. I promise. Thanks for your patience and your kind words.


	6. Chapter 6

"So what's first?" Cap asks.

Clint looks at him and Stark, and groans. Fuck, this is stupid. Every single thing about this is stupid.

First, there's the two of them. They're 'incognito' in their baseball caps and bomber jackets, but they're still two of the four most recognizable people in the world. (The only reasons Thor and Hulk outrank them are that, respectively, they refuse to wear anything but armor and are eight feet tall and _green_.)

Second, there's this thing Clint needs to do.

It makes his stomach churn just to think about it, but this is only his second mission in a year, and the last one was a shit storm, and this…this is how they used to start. Back when things made sense.

"Diner," Clint says. He forces more conviction than he feels.

Cap and Stark exchange a look, a silent conversation like the ones Clint used to have with Phil. At the end of it, Stark rolls his eyes and pulls out his phone, while Cap smiles. "Whatever you say, Clint."

Right. Because they're letting him take the lead on this. Aka, stupidity the third.

They find a place near the campus where Phil's apparently been teaching, but still a little bit out of the way. It's seat yourself, which makes things easier. Clint picks the corner booth, the one with the best sight lines. The one he and Phil would have chosen if this was their op.

Clint accepts the menu from the waitress and gives it a cursory glance. True to form, Cap settles on something quickly while Stark reads every freaking word and grumbles all the while. When the waitress returns, Cap puts a hand on Stark's knee and orders for them both. Stark glowers, but it's sort of a preening thing, like a cat who pretends not to like being touched. Not-so-secretly, he loves it.

Clint orders the closest thing to his usual and coffee, then passes the menu across the table.

"So," Stark says, glancing around. "How exactly is this part of our strategy?"

God, this is stupid.

Still, Clint explains it the way that it was explained to him. "Gives us a chance to talk and get a lay for the land. See what people here are like."

"What? Like how the waitresses are all bottle blondes, the guys at the counter are just passing through, except the old guy, he's a regular. And that they don't really clean the formica?"

"Yes, Stark. That's exactly what I wanted to find out."

Really, this was more Phil's part of the op than Clint's. Clint sees everything, but he doesn't always read the people well enough to know what he's seeing means.

Clint's coffee arrives, and he reaches for the sugar, and _oh_.

Oh.

His fingers and nerves are steel as he picks up the little crane tucked between the napkin dispenser and the Sweet 'N Low.

"Is that--?" Cap starts.

Clint nods, cutting him off. He centers the bird in his palm.

"Phil's been here."

…

As it turns out, Phil's been everywhere. Clint sends Cap and Stark to scout a place to stay (and _demands_ they not have sex in his room and pretends he doesn't see the evil gleam in Stark's dark eyes). In the meantime, he does some scouting of his own. Diners and corner booths and coffee shops, and the cranes are _everywhere_.

They're hidden in the seams of vinyl seats and tucked into tip jars. They're made from napkins and notepad paper and receipts, and on one, Clint even sees Phil's handwriting, random words about weapons of the second World War. Clint doesn’t unfold any of them, but that one…that one, he traces the looping swirls of 'S's and 'Q's.

He collects the cranes in a pocket of coat. After the first twenty, he loses count, but he doesn't stop looking.

He finds them in gutters and in the cracks in the sidewalks, and he knows what those mean. There's desperation here. Agitation, and Phil must, he has to be losing it to leave them around so haphazardly.

And it's been a year. An entire fucking year, and Clint just needs to find him and tell him that he's sorry.

He's so damn sorry, Phil.

Eventually, Clint follows the trail of paper cranes to Phil's apartment, and he promised Cap and Stark he wouldn't engage without backup, but that doesn't mean he can't look. He climbs to the roof of an adjacent building and stares through windows. There's no motion from within, but Clint can wait. He's waited so long already, and he's not leaving until he sees the man. Until he proves to himself this all is real.

While he waits, he fires up the app Stark installed on his phone to detect SHIELD bugs. Phil's building is literally crawling with them (and since when have they been installing bugs that _move_ , Christ, that is creepy).

Sighing, Clint closes the app and shuts his eyes.

This was never going to be the place to engage Phil, but he'd harbored a fantasy. One about barging in and Phil looking at him with grateful, loving eyes.

One about Phil kissing him.

And yeah, that one would have been more convenient if it had been in Phil's apartment.

It's not a problem, though. That's not why he's here. He opens his eyes and bites down hard. As long as Phil's all right… As long as Clint can bring him home…

It'll all be all right.

…

It's past nightfall before there's finally motion. Clint comes alert all at once, the way he does when he's got a target and a sniper rifle, as opposed to a debt and a weight in his broken heart.

One light comes on and then another, and then Clint's breath stops.

It's Phil. God, it's Phil.

He looks tired and ragged and like he's coming apart, and for a second, Clint doesn't care about the bugs or the op or the promises he made to anyone but Phil.

He's coming home with Clint. Today.

But Phil turns and wipes his hand across his face. He sets a briefcase down. And he leaves.

Clint stands and waits, watches the exit to the building, but all those pictures were taken against a backdrop of the sky and a black expanse of tar. Sure enough, a lone figure appears on the roof.

Phil looks even sadder now as he stares into the distance. As he pulls out his phone and points it at himself. The set of his shoulders is that of a man who has no hope, but he's still out there, still trying to be found.

Clint has to do this right.

He waits and he watches, and he loves so deeply and so much.

Eventually, Phil goes back inside, returns to his apartment and pulls the shades all down.

Clint stays up in his perch for a long while after that. Until the night takes over everything.

Until every one of Phil's lights go out.

…

"So that's your plan." Stark actually bothers to look up from his phone long enough to arch one brow at Clint.

It's been good, these past few days. Sinking back into an op makes Clint's bones feel solid and his marrow strong. This is a mission he believes in—one he has to see through.

A few visits to Phil's university have shown the place to be as infested with SHIELD tech as Phil's apartment. Three of his 'students' are interns, and the last time Clint swung by, he's sure he saw Agent Thirteen making uncomfortable advances at Phil in the faculty cafeteria. Clint's never worked with the woman, is pretty sure Phil hasn't either, but her reputation precedes her. If she's here…

After that, Clint retreated to take in the rest of Phil's life, tailing him to different coffee shops in different parts of the city, to diners and restaurants. And after, always back to his apartment where he sits on the roof and takes self-portraits on his phone, and Christ. The man looks so alone.

Clint flexes his throat. "You got a problem with that?"

"Problem? No. Stalking him out in some coffee shop and just randomly going up to him sounds foolproof. Doing this whole thing in public—"

"And what would you suggest? Kidnap him? It's Coulson. We try to take him and he'll kill us with a stapler."

Stark rolls his eyes. "Maybe you."

"You go in without the suit and he'd do the same to you, and the suit isn't exactly low profile."

"So we send Steve in—"

"Tony." Cap's voice is low but calm. He puts his hand on the back of Stark's neck and turns back to Clint. "Clint, if you think this is the best way to approach him, we'll follow your lead. His private spaces are compromised, and you're right. We're not kidnapping him. Public confrontation is risky, but it keeps SHEILD from sweeping this all under the rug."

Stark sighs. "It's not like they can disappear us, Steve. We're high profile as hell."

"You are," Clint interrupts. "Me? Maybe a little. But Phil…" Clint's tongue catches, and his eyes pinch. "They already disappeared him once. Who's to say what they'll do next?"

There's a long moment of silence. Finally, Stark says, "Fine. When?"

All the air goes out of Clint. "Tomorrow. First thing."

…

The op is all set up. Everything is in motion, and Clint is thrumming, running, even though he's perfectly still.

He tails Phil to a coffee shop, watches as he waits in line. Even standing in an alcove by the door, it's the closest Clint has been to him in a year, and it sets his skin on fire, makes his ribs tighten and his throat dry.

It's _him_. It's really him.

But it's also…not.

Closer up, Phil is a _mess_ , and Clint has never seen him anything but perfectly in control before. He's shaky and sweaty and his face is pale, the circles under his eyes more pronounced than Clint had realized. Even his tie isn't perfectly straight.

As Phil moves to the front of the line, he sways. Clint reads his lips. Phil gets the first part of his order but then he has to clutch at the counter, and it's as if he's forcing bile back down.

Saying he just needs one coffee. Just one.

Clint swallows hard.

Even if Phil wants this, even if Phil's been the one keeping himself under cover… Clint can't let him stay like this. Clint has to take care of him, pay him back for everything he's ever done

Clint's going to make this right.

He touches his ear. "You guys in place?"

"Roger that."

Stark and Cap are just outside, pretending to wait for a bus, and at the first sign of trouble they'll be here. Clint really hopes it doesn't come to that.

The barista calls out, "Large Americano," and Phil steps forward to grab his drink. Clint's ready, prepared to intercept him at the door, only Phil doesn't make it that far.

Hand at his temple, feet unsteady, Phil lurches toward an empty table and sits down. And this isn't his MO, isn't how he's been conducting himself these last few mornings.

Something's wrong.

"Change of plans, guys," Clint mutters.

He doesn't really hear whatever Cap is saying in his ear, because he's moving, he's moving toward _Phil_ , and his pulse is pounding, his palms too warm, and his heart… His heart aches and it's healed, and just the sight of Phil is almost enough. Almost.

Barely making a sound, Clint pulls out the chair opposite Phil's.

And then he's _Phil_ again, not that shivering, shaking mess. He's reaching into his jacket pocket, and for one instant Clint is glad he wore a vest, but there's nothing there. No gun, and Phil looks as shocked by that as Clint is. Still, Clint's already in motion, already has his own tiny pistol out and ready beneath the table, and his ankle is on Phil's, prepared to trip him if he runs.

Phil looks up. His eyes meet Clint's and Clint _knows_ those eyes. Sharp and clear and seeing right through him, and Clint has missed him. He's missed him so fucking much.

The word is aching as Clint says, simply, "Phil."

A hundred worlds pass through the grey of Phil's eyes, longing and heartache, and deep inside them, Clint swears there's recognition. There's home.

Phil blinks.

And just as quickly, he's the man from the line, and his face is waxy and white.

There's not a hint of recognition in those eyes.

"I'm sorry," Phil says. "Do I know you?"

And Clint doesn't even have time to be hurt. Because in the next instant, Phil is writhing on the floor.

…

Oh, God.

_Oh God Oh God Ohgodohgodohgod._

Phil is on his back, his eyelids twitching and the irises half-rolled back in his skull, and he's choking, gagging. Clint has the bare presence of mind to put his gun away and mumble into his com, "Agent down," and then he's on his knees beside Phil, rolling him. Phil's hands fist into Clint's coat, and Clint's hovering over him, saying his name.

At his voice, Phil eases. Not much but a little.

Christ.

And Clint doesn't care, doesn't have any pride left. He leans down and speaks into Phil's ear, "I found you, I found you, and I'm bringing you home. I found your goddamn cranes and the pictures you took, and it's all going to be all right, but fuck, Phil, you can't die on me now. Not now."

"Agent Barton."

Clint whips around, and his first instinct is to keep his body over Phil's, to protect him from anything that's coming.

And Clint is stupid. He's so, so stupid.

Two men and a woman, all with looks on their faces that Clint knows entirely too well. Smart suits and neat hair and almost-invisible nubs in their ears.

Because of course, with all of that surveillance, SHIELD wouldn't let Phil wander in the world alone.

In the background, someone is screaming about calling for an ambulance. But right here, right now, there's a standoff, and Clint isn't going to let this go SHIELD's way.

He will burn them, just as badly as they've burned him.

"Hostiles," he says into his com, but he didn't need to.

Because nothing is ever simple, and nothing is ever low-profile with Tony fucking Stark.

In that instant, plate glass shatters and Iron Man swoops in, and Clint can't decide if he should laugh or cry.

"Hey there, Agent. Oh, wait, Katniss got your tongue?"

"Stark…"

Iron Man stalks over, servos whirring, and he crouches down. Quiet, so only Clint can hear him, Stark says, "He's fine. Elevated pulse. Unusual brain activity, but he'll be fine."

Thank God.

"I'm not letting them take him."

"Of course you're not," Cap's voice rings out, and Clint looks up to see him standing over them both, shield on his arm.

And this has to be the start of about a hundred of Phil's adolescent fantasies. Except, you know, minus Stark. And maybe minus Clint.

Clint glances from Cap to Stark and back again. In his peripheral vision, he can see the SHIELD agents closing on them.

Iron Man looks down, then puts his arms under Phil and lifts him. To Cap, he asks, "You got this?"

Cap nods.

Standing, Iron Man says, "Meet you back at the tower, then."

And carrying Phil bridal style, Iron man takes a half dozen lumbering steps toward the door (at least he uses the door this time), and then he's skybound, a bright red streak in the sky.

"Come on."

Cap tugs on Clint's arm until he's standing. Putting the shield between them and the agents, he starts to back them toward the door. Clint darts his gaze to the window to see a car parked there, and it's Stark's car, thank goodness. It's like a rocket bred with a tank, fast and sleek and armed to the teeth.

Out of the corner of his mouth, Cap says, "On three."

Clint counts in his head, and then they're making a run for it, Cap covering them both. They're in the car, with Cap behind the wheel, and he tears out, a screech of tires and a quick turn, and the SHIELD agents aren't going to lose their tail. Of course they're not. They're as conspicuous as they could possibly be, and Stark already told everyone in the world where they're going.

But that's okay. At this point, it isn't about not being found. It's about a bluff, and an understanding that SHIELD won't start a war over this. Not when the secret is already out of the bag.

Clint just keeps repeating that secret to himself as he shifts his gaze between the mirrors of the car, watching for trouble, for anything.

At the end of the day, Phil is alive. Phil is _alive_.

No matter what happens next, no matter what is wrong with him…that has to be enough.

Clint saved him.

Just like all the times that Phil's saved him.


	7. Chapter 7

"Jesus. What the hell did they do to him?"

The voice is faint in the darkness, but it's good. It's comforting and right. Through the thickness bearing down on him, Phil grasps at it and holds. He holds on with all his might.

Another voice, quieter and deeper. "I've never seen anything like this before. His brain activity is…off the charts."

"But what did they do?"

"Hard to say. Some kind of mental manipulation? See this here? It's where long-term memories are made, and it's like someone drove a truck through it."

"Is he…"

There's pain there. Phil's hand twitches and he floats closer to the surface, but he can't break through.

"He's still got so many drugs in his system. I'm detoxing him the best I can, but until they're all gone…it's hard to say. And there's…"

"What?" A beat of silence. " _What?_ "

"There's something else going on. Something I can't get a pin on."

"Bruce…"

"We're doing our best. Me and Tony both. Even Thor's looking at it, in case it's something related to how he…to what Loki did."

"But he's—" The voice breaks, and there's a rippling of energy, deep and hot inside Phil's chest. "He's going to be okay, right?"

"Give it a couple days. I'm keeping him under until then. After the episode he had when he first saw you…"

There's silence and then warmth on Phil's hand, and everything in him eases. The words fade away, all their meaning and all their implication, and there's just this contact. This touch.

This is right.

He's been so lost. But this is right.

…

In the dream, Phil Coulson is battling himself, battling SHIELD, and he lashes out, an elbow to ribs and there's a gun in his hands, but when he turns, it's just another version of himself. A man in a suit, and he's no one. No one.

His other self steps forward, hand extended. In his palm is a paper crane. Phil Coulson reaches out and strokes its wing.

He doesn't know what's real.

"Fly home now." The other Phil smiles and nods to the side. "He'll take care of us."

He explodes into electric blue.

Phil starts awake, is confronted with beeping and ceiling tiles and a name on his lips.

"Clint."

He squeezes his eyes shut. He can't do this again.

Energy crackles under his skin.

Uneasiness boils in his stomach, bile rising up, and he's going to be sick, he will be if… He remembers looking at an empty chair—remembers slipping through the holes in his life.

He forces his eyes open. Wider and wider, and the beeping in the distance grows in volume, racing and too loud and…

The chair isn't empty. A man is sitting there, eyes closed, head slumped forward, hand on Phil's. Just where he's supposed to be.

Phil tries the word again, and it's parched and quiet, but he says it. " _Clint._ "

The man shifts, and Phil can breathe. For the first time in ages, he feels like he can breathe.

He closes his eyes. The blue around the edges of his vision recedes.

And for just a second…for just a _second_ , he knows who he is.

…

…

Clint wakes in darkness. His gaze goes immediately to Phil. Phil, who's still and pale. Three days and he's scarcely moved. Sometimes, his eyes dart around behind closed lids, fingers twitching. Sometimes, nothing.

Clint rubs a hand over his face and sits up straight, stretching and working the kinks out. Three days and Clint has hardly moved either, dozing in a chair and pacing, listening to Bruce and Stark and their theories. Compelled to stay, desperate to stay, but afraid he's intruding. Not sure he entirely belongs.

How many times has he sat beside Phil in a hospital like this? And _now_ he isn't sure if he belongs.

He's been so focused on bringing Phil home, but all he can see when he sleeps is the look on Phil's face in the coffee shop, lost and then blank and then terrified, in pain. Like it hurt just to look at Clint.

It hurts to look at Phil, now.

Because Clint loves Phil, he's loved him for so long. But Phil isn't his. He missed his chance, and Phil's been living as another person for a year. His wallet was full of cards and IDs with another name, with the same face but different eyes. Clint thinks Phil's been trying to get home, but…who knows who Phil is now. Who knows what he wants.

Maybe Clint should go.

Or maybe, at least, he should get some space.

Standing, Clint twists until his spine pops. He gives a passing glance to the monitors they've got Phil hooked up to. His heart is steady enough, and he's breathing easy. The graphs that show his brain activity are too complicated for Clint to really sort out, but the colors are less vivid than they were. That seems good. Bruce said the chemicals in his system were leveling out, and that whatever else he'd thought was off wasn't showing up in any scan. That Phil would probably be waking up in the next day or so.

They still haven't decided if Clint should be there at that point or not. If the detox doesn't work, if Phil collapses again, just looking at Clint…

Clint pivots on his heels, taking one last look back at the sleeping form beneath the sheets.

He just needs a little space.

Decision made, he strides toward the door and out into the hall. Bruce is sitting in the office next to the medical suite, eating an apple and staring at a monitor. Clint knocks and hovers in the doorway.

Bruce startles, half-standing even as he speaks. "Is he—"

"No." Clint shakes his head. "I just…I need to get some air."

Sighing, Bruce sits back down. "Sure. I just thought… You haven't left him..."

"Believe me, I know." He darts his gaze back toward the room where Phil is sleeping. "I'll be back. Soon."

"Okay. I'll keep an eye on him."

"Thanks." Clint forces a half-smile. "For everything."

"Of course." He glances around. "You know SHIELD has the building surrounded, right?"

Yeah, that much was pretty clear even from the windows inside the room. Clint had played with the bug-detector on his phone while he was sitting at Phil's bedside. The tower itself was clean, but just outside…

"Have they tried to make contact?"

"Only constantly," Bruce says, rolling his eyes. "Lots of ominous missives to the effect of 'you don't know what you're getting yourselves into' and 'answer the damn phone, Stark.'"

"Sounds like Fury."

"Y'think? Tony's already threatened to kick us all out if he finds Fury standing in his living room again."

Clint casts a wistful look back at Phil's room. "They really want him back, huh?"

"Yup. But we're not letting them have him. Not til we find out for ourselves what's going on."

"And even then…"

"Even then, they're not taking him." A moment's pause and a wince. Bruce leans in. "But you have to realize, Clint. There's something weird going on."

Clint hesitates for a second. "Yeah. I know."

They hold each other's gaze for a second, then Clint taps his fingers against the wall.

There's too much to process—his relief at having Phil back and the weight of everything that could be wrong.

He needs to move.

Giving Bruce one last nod, he takes off, heading where he always goes.

…

The instant his bow is in his hands, Clint's mind clears. He tests the weight of an arrow and locks his grip, and he sees the target. Pulling the string back, it's like parting the clouds, and there's only this.

The twang of the string and the whistle. The _thwack_ into the bull's-eye.

And the near-silent opening of the door.

Clint knocks back another arrow without responding. There's no sound of feet, no voice. He lets the arrow sail and lands it right beside the other.

"Hello, Tasha."

Silence for a minute, and then she's sitting against the wall beside him. He doesn’t take his eyes off the target, but she's clear as can be in his periphery. She's small.

But then again, she's good at making herself look that way, when it suits her.

"I didn't know."

He glances at her for just a second, connects with eyes that hold no lie.

"I believe you," he says. It doesn't matter if he does or if he doesn't. Truth has a different value for the two of them. If it didn't, they could never have made it this far.

He takes a couple more shots, aiming at different regions of the target. Each time, his aim is true, and each time he feels more himself. He breathes easier.

"I understand why you couldn't trust me," she says. "Though I wish you would have."

"Was it SHIELD?"

It has to have been, considering the agents that came out of the woodwork, considering the presence of Agent Thirteen.

"Looks like it."

The muscle in his trigger finger twitches, but he evens out his stance and re-centers. The arrow hits exactly where he means it to. It hits deep. "Fury?"

"His fingerprints are all over it."

"He's lost the team with this."

"I know. He probably knows now, too. But he _made_ the team with it."

Clint twists his head and looks at Tasha. "You can't tell me this was right."

Her voice is low and even and calm. It sounds like when she was talking him down after Loki, when she was telling him not to think about what he had done when he wasn't himself. "I'm telling you he must have had his reasons. He must _still_ have his reasons if he's devoting that much manpower to the cover-up. But he went too far. He could have told us Coulson made it right after New York was safe again."

"But he didn’t." Clint's throat clenches, a wobble to the words as he lowers his bow.

He doesn't have the shot.

"He didn't."

"He fucked with Phil's memory. After what's been done to us, how can he, how could he—"

Natasha stands, comes to Clint's side, and her hand is on his arm. "He made the wrong call. And we're going to tell him that."

"He shouldn't have to be told. He took—he took him, Tasha. He had no right."

The bow is out of his hands, and Tasha has an arm around him, is pressing his face to her neck, and he takes a long, deep, shuddering breath. She whispers gentle words in Russian, and he only understands every other phrase over the shaking in his shoulders.

And God, ever since he found that crane, he's been trying to be strong. He's _been_ strong.

For a few minutes, he lets go, and he's speaking secrets into her ear, about how he needs Phil to be okay, and he's not sure if he's okay, and if he's not…

"I know," she murmurs, and she rubs a hand down his spine.

He takes another couple breaths, then lifts up. She drops her arms and turns away. His eyes are dry but his lungs feel wet, like he's been stabbed through.

When she turns around again, the moment's over, and he's fine. He's strong. Strong enough to be there for Phil, if he wants him to be. Strong enough to walk away, if he doesn't.

Strong enough to face whoever Phil is when he opens his eyes.

…

…

Phil opens his eyes, and memories rush back into him, so many memories, but they're all at war. Too many lives, and too much blue, too much energy rippling under his skin, and he wants…he wants _this_ life, the one that's like a dream and that still feels like it might be his. The one where he wakes up in a hospital, and _he_ 's sitting there.

Phil wants it so badly he burns.

He opens his eyes and he looks to the side.

The chair is empty.

The chair is empty.

Phil opens his eyes and opens his mouth.

And screams.

…

…

"Clint?"

Clint's communicator crackles as he's putting away his bow, Bruce's voice rising over the static, and Clint's immediately in go-mode. Tasha is, too, but he holds out a hand to ask her to wait.

"Talk to me."

There's heavy breathing, sounds of exertion, and Clint has the bow back out, is already moving to the door.

"Coulson's awake."

Clint's heart pounds, blood in his ear and the taste of it in his mouth. "And—"

"And he's freaking out." Sounds of struggle in the distance, and oh God—"How fast can you get here?"

But what if Clint just makes things worse? "Are you sure?"

"He said your name."

Oh. _Oh._

"On my way." He puts out his hand again, tilts his head to the side at Natasha in a silent gesture of beckoning. She falls in right behind him.

And he's in motion.

"Tony has JARVIS sending an elevator to you."

Sure enough, the instant Clint steps into the bay, the elevator doors slide open, and Clint and Natasha step in. The doors slam shut and they shoot upward, his stomach jerking, and he pushes his hands against the railing to steady himself. Seconds later, they're expelled out into the hall.

Clint swallows up the space to the medical suite with sure strides, shoves through, and—

" _Jesus_."

Phil is in the corner, his back to the glass wall and a wild look to his eyes as he holds a tray full of instruments. He could kill them with any one of them, could kill them with a paperclip, Clint's seen Phil do it before.

Cap is standing opposite him, unarmed, the shield at his feet. He's holding his hands out, trying to be calming the way he does. Stark is at the other wall, frantically paging through screens full of readings, and Bruce is by the door. Clint takes one hard look at his eyes.

Not green. Not yet.

"Oh, thank God," Stark says as Clint enters, and Phil's gaze swings from Cap to him and then to Clint.

And the moment seems to last forever, Clint looking at Phil and Phil looking at Clint, and then Clint's heart stutters in his chest.

"Your eyes—" he says, and it can't be. It can't. He visibly recoils.

He knows that spark of blue.

"This isn't real," is all Phil says, and then—

The blast is a shimmer, is a perfect circle of expanding azure energy, waves of color and magic and static. It sounds like a sonic boom and feels like a wall, and Clint is on his back. The air sizzles, crackles with heat and _blue_ , and Clint reels. He opens his eyes and swims with the force, with the stars in his head. All around him, it's chaos. It's Cap on his knees and Bruce shuddering and stretching, limbs growing longer as his spine flexes. It's Stark plastered to the wall with blood running in a trickle from his nose, Natasha taking cover behind an instrument panel, and it's Phil.

It's Phil in a ball on the floor.

Phil, at the center of it all.

"This isn't real."

The second pulse is weaker, but it still knocks Clint backward. He staggers up as soon as it's past, rising to his knees and struggling to stand. Phil is still staring at him. He says, "I'm not _real_. Who _am_ I?"

A third ring of force, and Cap is on the ground, reaching for his shield, the door is bursting open as the armor shoots like a bullet through the steel, and Hulk roars.

But Clint only has eyes for Phil.

Phil who is terror and loss and the epicenter of a storm, and he's still everything to Clint.

A fourth blast, and Clint grits his teeth and stands against it, stands against the power that wants to floor him, and he holds out his hand. As if he can will everyone else to stand down, as if he can will Phil to listen. Just listen.

And hear.

"Phil," he says. "Phil—"

"Who _are_ you?"

Phil's looking straight at Clint.

Clint takes one step and then another, and the blue is in his bones, is in his mind, and it tastes like magic and feels like pain. It's in his heart and in his lungs.

Clint's been here before, and it consumed him. Today, he consumes it. He feeds on it, takes it and pulls it into him.

"You're Phil Coulson," Clint says. His hair blows back with the crush of the expanding circle of force radiating out from Phil, but instead of pushing him back, the magic shivers right through him. "You're Phil Coulson, and I'm Clint Barton."

Phil shakes his head, but Clint staggers closer.

"You're Phil Coulson, agent of SHIELD. You love Captain America and Dolce and Gabbana suits and powdered donuts." Clint's eyes sting, his voice shakes. "You love bad reality TV."

Phil seems to falter.

Clint keeps coming closer, and everything inside of him is aching, his fingertips crackling. He holds out his hand, and he can almost touch Phil. Almost.

"You're Phil Coulson, and I'm Clint Barton." Clint gestures widely, "And these are your friends. Whatever was done to you—"

Shaking his head again, Phil collapses further into himself, but there's no attack, no burst of force and magic and blue, and Clint is so close.

"Barton," Cap says, "Get—"

"Hold on," Natasha calls.

"Who _are_ you?" Phil asks.

"I'm Clint."

"And what do you love?"

It's the easiest question in the world. Clint drops to crouch before Phil, eye to eye and only inches in between them. There's another blast, but it expands around Clint, passes him by. He hears the impact with the others in the room, hears Iron Man telling everyone to get clear and Hulk slamming into the floor, hears the clang of the shield.

And it doesn't matter that Clint never expected Phil to love him, too.

Clint reaches out. His hand connects with Phil's cheek, and they both shudder, and Clint says, simply, "You."

The whole room fills with blue like water, like the splitting of an atom, but it's not force. It's not force at all. It's a flood and warmth, and Clint and Phil are in the center of it, are the only two beings in the world.

They are whole and they are here.

Phil clasps Clint's hand in his.

In a rush of silence like wind in Clint's ears, the magic sucks back in, pulls back in until it's inside Phil and in the space between their hands.

Phil's eyes clear.

And he's Phil. He's the Phil that Clint's been looking for, and there is no magic and there is no loss. There is no pain.

His grey eyes watering, his voice breaking, Phil says, "Clint?"

It's recognition, and it's knowing and being known.

And then Phil's in Clint's arms, Clint is holding him so tight. Phil's hand threads through Clint's hair, pulling him in, angling him perfectly right, and then it's just the wet press of lips, the taste of Phil's mouth, and it crackles on Clint's tongue. He kisses Phil, and he could drown in it, could _live_ on this and this alone.

Phil tears his mouth away, presses their foreheads together, but he doesn't let go. "Clint?"

"I'm here." He kisses Phil again and again. "I'm here."

"Are you real?"

Clint laughs. "I'm so real. And I'm not letting you go."

"I got so lost—"

"And I found you."

"I was looking for—"

And then the whole glass wall of the room explodes.


	8. Chapter 8

It feels like this:

One moment, Phil is staring at a ghost, and there are two lives in his head, and he is clinging, desperate, needing the one in front of him to be real. He looks at the man before him, and crackling blue moves through Phil's chest and through his lungs, it multiplies and breeds, and Phil wants this.

He wants so much for this to be real.

But the chair was empty and he doesn't know himself, and it's like looking at a 3D movie without the glasses. It's like the edges of his not-quite-lives aren't matching up.

And he knows it. He knows it deep down in his gut.

"This isn't real."

The power in his heart bleeds to his veins, and it's not enough. It's not contained, and all the grief and confusion are _too much_.

They overwhelm him.

He feels the spear burst through his ribs, and the ember that was left there is a fire, is a spark.

It's a conflagration.

It tears out of him, and he is fire and anger and want. He is the wrath of a god.

He dies all over, again and again.

("Agent Coulson is down.")

He's babbling, and he doesn't know why, doesn't know who he is, doesn't want this ghost to touch him, but he wants it. He wants it more than anything.

The ghost tells him what he loves and who he is and who _he_ is.

It isn't real.

It isn't real.

("Agent Coulson is _down_.")

The energy is a pulsing, living thing, and with every surge, Phil shatters, feels ribs and flesh pierced through. He feels himself torn open again. He watches as the others in the room are felled, are taken down by a cerulean wave.

He watches one figure stagger through.

Phil wants for this to be _real_.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Clint."

"And what do you love?"

The ghost is right in front of Phil, is right there, and Phil shapes the surge of energy. He makes a hole and he pulls this ghost right through, makes him part of himself.

Warmth on Phil's cheek. Touch.

"You."

Time stops, and the energy is a living, pulsing thing, but it isn't tearing Phil apart.

It's putting him back together again.

The wound in his chest catches and burns, a vortex, and the heat sucks right back in.

Phil puts his hand over Clint's, and he is _real_.

He's so, so real.

And everything is clear.

"Clint?"

Phil knows who he is.

And what he's always wanted, what he's always needed is to kiss this man.

It's better than he ever imagined it would be, slick and hot and the taste of breath inside Phil's lungs, bringing him back to himself, and God. He _remembers_.

He remembers a childhood playing baseball and collecting trading cards, remembers his mother's smile and the day he shipped off. He remembers the Rangers and a meeting and a suit.

He remembers Thor and Natasha and Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner and Tony Stark.

He remembers Clint and nights on surveillance, paper cranes and diners and coffee for two. Clint on a roof with him and Clint in his ear and Clint and Clint and _Clint_ …

The azure splinters in his chest recede, and the world is suddenly in color.

He breaks the kiss. "Clint?"

"I'm here. I'm here."

And Phil knows, but… "Are you real?"

"I'm so real. And I'm not letting you go."

"I got so lost—"

"And I found you."

"I was looking for—"

But Phil doesn't get to say ' _you'_.

Glass shatters, and Phil whips his head up. Inside him, power ripples, and he stands, protectiveness and anger unfurling, out beyond his control, as he drops Clint's hand. The energy flows from his chest to his arms, until his palms are balls of shimmering, shivering blue.

"Phil—"

A dozen figures in black swoop through the window, and he remembers this, too.

This time, Phil won't go.

"No…"

He casts his arms to the side, pulls Clint into him in his mind, and lets the energy inside his chest burst out. The men in black stumble, knocked backwards by the wave of force, but three last figures land in the room and—

A deep, booming voice. A voice Phil knows. "Agent Coulson. Stand. Down."

Phil shakes his head, and the energy flows back up his arms, lodges in the back of his throat. Clint is still there, has a hand on Phil's spine, and he's screaming, screaming, "Phil!"

Phil comes back to himself. He looks around.

A dozen agents are on the ground, and there is blood and glass. Iron Man and Captain America and the Hulk are back against the walls, a flash of red hair behind a cabinet that must be Natasha. The door bursts open and Thor storms in, and…

And in the center of it all, in the middle of this mess, Nick Fury stands, black coat whipping in the wind, flanked by Agent Hill and Agent Thirteen.

And all of this is real.

He turns to Clint, and he sees terror in his eyes, for all that he's trying to hide it. Clint's afraid of _Phil_.

The power quakes inside Phil's heart.

"What just—" he starts, pulling away from Clint. Clint's hand drops away.

The energy ripples, and Agent Thirteen steps forward, a little black box in her hand. She presses a button, and the air before her shivers. When the wave of blue bursts forward, it hits the shimmer like a wall. It crackles and sputters and dies, and the people beyond it remain unaffected.

There's movement on the floor and at the edges of the room, Iron Man peeling himself from where's been embedded in plaster and the Hulk shaking himself off. The agents stir.

Phil hasn't killed them. He hasn't, thank God.

A flood of memory overtakes Phil, and he reels.

He _remembers_. He remembers Loki's spear thrust through his chest and waking from surgery in a wave of crackling blue, remembers doctors on the ground and his heart monitor screaming, remembers needles and numb and sitting in a room with walls that shivered.

He remembers Nick Fury standing just beyond the shimmer and saying, "This isn't going to work any other way."

He remembers, "I'm sorry."

He remembers sweating and retching and burst after burst of numbing, terrifying, screaming blue. He remembers being completely and totally out of control.

And Phil has known Nick, he's known him for so long.

"Nick."

" _Nick_?"Clint's voice is incredulous, his hand reaching up to wrap around Phil's.

Phil turns to look at him, and the energy is surging inside of him right along with his emotions, but he's grounded. He feels the shape of the static in his heart in a way he never could before, not in that memory. He feels the hole he makes in it for Clint—he finds the edges of it that way.

He pulls it into himself, where it can't hurt anybody.

The light recedes from his palms.

Control. Phil is in control.

Gazing into Phil's eyes, Clint eases, and Phil relaxes, too.

There's a long beat of silence amidst the chaos.

And then Tony Stark's voice, saying, "Would someone like to tell me what the _fuck_ is going on?"

…

In the course of his career, Phil Coulson has cleaned up after a lot of bad ops. Never, ever before has he had to clean up after his own, though—he's never had to have someone _else_ clean up after him. Shame rolls through him, the energy crackling deep, but he keeps it under control. He keeps it contained. That's his only job right now.

Medics come and medics go. The anonymous agents Phil took down with an unconscious heave of energy storming out of his body are removed with varying levels of attention, all alive. All injured, but all alive.

Clint's at Phil's side, and he peels Phil's hands from his eyes.

"Hey," Clint says. "Hey, are you okay?"

Phil grabs his hand, because he wants to touch him and to remind himself this all is real. Because it makes it easier to keep the surge inside of him contained. But he shouldn't. If he hurt Clint…

"I don't know." Phil laughs, but nothing about this is funny. Nothing is funny at all.

"Can you—Are you—?" Clint's hand flutters over Phil's shoulder. "Stark's getting someone in to board up those windows. Fury wants to take you to some SHIELD place, but I wouldn't let him. I think…we've compromised on one of the secure rooms? Here?"

Phil's ribs ache, but the energy is contained. He should insist Clint let Fury take him away. They've got a room that's safe, he knows, a place where he won't hurt anyone.

He's selfish, though. He's so selfish.

He nods and lets Clint help him up. On the other side of the room, behind Agent Thirteen and Fury and Hill, the rest of the Avengers are clustered, and Phil can hardly meet their eyes. Captain America and Iron Man both look beat up (shit, Phil roughed up _Captain America_ ), blood and plaster dust and a cut right over Iron Man's eye. Hulk is seething, looming in front of Iron Man, Thor a little distance away from him. Natasha is apart, looking like she wants to cross the line, but something she sees when she looks at Clint keeps her back.

Phil should tell Clint to stay back.

He doesn't, though. Flagging now, exhausted in a way he hasn't felt in a year, he lets Clint get his arm around him, leans on him as they make their way to the hall. It's two floors down. But instead of a holding cell, Clint guides him to a conference room. A conference room with thick, metal walls, but a conference room all the same.

When Clint pulls out a chair, Phil sinks into it. He doesn't argue when Clint sits right next to him.

Phil drops his head into his hands, and Clint reaches out. He settles a warm hand on Phil's shoulder, and Phil…he soaks this up. He takes it while he can.

He only just found this, after years of silently admiring, silently loving, and a year spent lost and alone… Deep in his throat, the laughter bubbles up. All this time, he was so desperate for connection, searching aimlessly for _this_. And he's going to have to give it up.

A few long minutes later, everyone else files in, Stark still in his suit but Banner looking like himself again, if a little sheepish. More than a little exhausted. No one makes eye contact, and Phil doesn’t look for it. Agent Thirteen sits closest to Phil but still three seats away. She puts the little box down on the table and presses the button, making a wall of shimmering air appear between him and the team and SHIELD. Phil is where he belongs now: on the other side of that line.

Unsurprisingly, Fury is the first to speak. "Agent Coulson."

"Director."

"I wish we were meeting again under better circumstances."

Phil chuckles darkly. Because he remembers, now. He remembers what his options are and will be. "You wish we weren't meeting again at all."

Clint's hand tenses on Phil's shoulder.

"Nothing personal, but no. I wish we weren't." Fury's mouth is a grim line.

"Maybe," Captain Rogers says, "you should explain."

And Phil can really look at him now, can see all of the Avengers. Captain Rogers is glancing between Clint and Phil and Fury, and there's no judgment in his eyes, no decision. Phil can almost feel him trying to get all the information, to broker a compromise. Because he's exactly the man Phil had always hoped that he would be.

Natasha, too, is neutral, torn, while Stark and Banner both look like they're chomping at the bit, just wanting to understand. Thor looks like he already understands.

Probably, he does.

Fury sits back in his chair and sighs. His gaze lands on Phil directly, and Phil loves him for that. He loves that Fury will never not look a man in the eye while giving him a death sentence.

"Agent Philip Coulson died on the Helicarrier on the eve of the Battle of New York."

Clint hisses.

Smirking, Fury continues, "So you can imagine my medical examiner's surprise when, during his autopsy, he opened his eyes."

And Phil _remembers_ that.

 _He's sitting up, air whooshing back into his lungs, a breath that tastes like blue and aching in his lungs, a spark so hot, and he can't hold it…He can't_ hold _it…_

_A sphere of exploding, radiating blue._

_His chest collapses and re-expands, and he looks up. A man in a white coat is on the floor, two agents across the room on the floor, and, oh God. He's off the cold, steel table, naked but for a sheet and looking for a pulse._

_Only there's none to be found._

Fury's smile fades away. "At least I imagine he was surprised. Because three seconds after touching Agent Coulson's body, he—along with two of my agents—were deceased."

"Jesus." Clint says it with horror, but he doesn't let go.

Not yet.

(The energy curls and curls and curls, and Phil leans into Clint. He pushes it down.)

"What—" Captain Rogers starts.

Fury cuts him off. "Agent Philip Coulson died on the Helicarrier on the eve of the Battle of New York, because he was stabbed by a god with a magical spear. The best we can surmise, a fragment of that spear was left inside Agent Coulson's heart." He turns to Stark. "You've seen the footage of the tests your father did on the pieces we extracted from the Tesseract during the war."

Swallowing, Stark runs a gauntleted hand over his face, then flicks both his wrists in a circle. "Ka-blooey."

"Eloquent. But for lack of a better word, yes. The spear was endowed with the power of the Tesseract. Just a tiny shard contains near limitless energy. More than enough energy to bring someone back from the dead and to leave plenty behind." He fixes Phil with his gaze. "You were a walking, erratically deploying time bomb. You had no control over it."

"I know," Phil says.

_A wave and then another wave, every time he thinks of his death, thinks of the Avengers or Loki or Clint. Fuck, Clint…_

_Rippling bursts, and Phil is spinning, is reeling and dying, and everyone around him is awash in blue. Power that he can't contain, and too much and…_

"Eventually, we managed to get Agent Coulson sedated and contained, thanks to some of the force field technology we have been developing in partnership with private enterprise." He shifts his gaze to Stark and raises his eyebrow before settling it back down and turning to Phil. "But it didn't matter. Every time Agent Coulson experienced any strong emotion, the energy bursts continued." His throat bobs, and his voice loses some of its edge. "You had a nightmare and you killed a guard. Hell, you had a wet dream, and you broke people's spines."

Christ, Phil _knows_.

"You were a walking weapon, Agent. And we were left with three choices: the first, which the Council recommended, was to terminate you."

Clint's grip on Phil's arm is deep enough to bruise, but Phil doesn't push him off. "You asshole—"

"For obvious reasons," Fury says, talking over him, "we rejected this option as a last resort. Besides, based on prior evidence it seemed doubtful it would take. The second option, which the Council also endorsed, was seclusion. A lifetime behind a force field." Fury's expression softens incrementally. It looks like it did when he told Phil he wasn't allowed to die.

How many times now has Nick told Phil that he's not allowed to die?

"You would have been sedated and contained and isolated and weaponized," Fury says. "Only to be pulled out when we needed you and then shoved back in a room somewhere. Who knows who you would have killed or what they would have turned you into. There were…factions intent on developing your ability. They were confident you could go nuclear with the right manipulation."

Phil wants to be sick, but it isn't anything he didn't know. Around the room, there are noises of discomfort, fidgeting and the clearing of throats. Captain Rogers looks like he's gripping the table hard enough to break it. Phil's gaze connects with his. Because he alone knows what it is to be a weapon.

Maybe Banner has a sense of it, too.

But Phil tries not to react. The writing's on the wall.

The four walls he'll likely be staring at for the rest of his life.

Fury frowns. "You couldn't control it, Phil."

"I know, boss." Phil takes a deep breath. "So you picked the third option."

"Top secret," Fury agrees. "Wiped from all records to keep it off the Council's radar. To keep it off the radar of anyone who would try to use you." Addressing the rest of the group, he explains, "We found a way to control Agent Coulson's new abilities with a cocktail of regularly administered drugs, but part of that treatment necessitated keeping him from remembering anything from his life that could evoke a strong emotional response." He swallows hard and stares at Phil. "We made you a normal life. Protected you. It was the best I could do for you, Phil."

But clearly Clint doesn't agree. "And you never thought to tell us this? We have two geniuses on staff. One of them could have—"

Fury's gaze swings to the side, and his face goes hard. "We made a call, Agent Barton. The success of the Avengers was predicated on the sacrifice of Agent Coulson. Considering that, we chose to handle the matter internally. He could have been stuck in a box for the rest of his life and fought over by political powers trying to turn him into an H-bomb. This was the most humane—"

"Don't you talk to me about humane. What about us? We lost—"

"I lost my best operative and one of my best friends. I made a call. I gave him a life."

"You gave him a lie, and you took—" Clint's voice breaks, and his mouth snaps shut, his face turning to the side.

Phil reaches out and grasps Clint's hand.

God, this is going to hurt.

"He did was he had to do," Phil says. He glances up. "And he'll do what he has to do again."

"What—" Clint's jaw drops, and he's out of his seat, eyes going wildly from Phil to Fury and then to all the Captain and Stark. "No. No, he can't have you. We found you."

"The drugs we gave Agent Coulson were ultimately ineffective. Even without the interference of the Avengers, he was losing it. He was remembering. I'm sorry, Agent."

Phil's sorry, too. He was so lost, and everything hurt. It was a life, but it wasn't one he could live with. He's not sure he can live with this either, but…

"I'll go quietly."

"What? No! No, you won't. He won't. Stark? Cap? Bruce. Tasha, we're not going to let him. We can come up with something better. Thor, you must have—"

"Clint…"

"No." Clint shakes head, and drops to his knees in front of Phil, hands on Phil's face, and his eyes are shining. "You can't. You can't. I just got you back, and…" His gaze dips to Phil's mouth, and Phil goes hot inside.

The chrysalis of energy at the center of him rumbles, but he holds it in.

Clint slides his thumb along the bottom of Phil's lip. "I love you."

Phil's whole face crumples. "I love you, too." He swallows hard and lays his fingers over Clint's. "But I won't be a threat. I won't hurt anyone." Barely a whisper. "I won't hurt you."

Shaking his head, Clint insists, "You won't. You didn't. Back there, you…"

"You want to trust in that?" 

Clint's voice goes low. "Of course I trust you. And we can work on it. Together. Bruce, Bruce knows about keeping it together. And he and Stark can come up with some sort of Coulson room, like the Hulk cage. We'll keep you safe. They can invent new drugs, or…or…"

"Agent," Fury interjects. "After your escape and your…incident, we can't keep this secret from the Council anymore. If you don't come with us, it will not be a SHIELD op."

"Then it'll be an Avengers op," Captain Rogers says. He stands, and he's got that look that graced the covers of comics, all determination and loyalty.

Stark's beside him, nodding. "Force fields. Easy. And Bruce and I can do pharmaceuticals. I can think of three non-shitty options right off the top of my head—"

"Meditation," Banner says. "Yoga. Avenging. Lots of ways to beat something inside you that wants to get out."

Thor agrees. "I pledge all the resources of Asgard to determine the nature of the power left from Loki's attack."

"You won't need to."

All eyes go to Natasha. Her hands are clasped behind her, her chin tipped back, shoulders square.

"Would you like to explain, Agent Romanoff?"

"Agent Coulson has it under control." She tilts her head to the side. "He's been able to control the energy blasts so that they do not affect Agent Barton. And as long as Agent Barton is touching him…He hasn't had an attack since Agent Barton helped him up, back in the medical suite. And I think it's safe to say that this has been an emotional conversation."

Phil's mind reels. Because she's right.

"That's hardly…"

"With all due respect, it's more than enough progress from a lethal, involuntary reflex to give Agent Coulson the opportunity to attempt to discipline it himself. Sir." Her eyebrow arches in challenge, and no one— _no one_ —is stupid enough to mess with Natasha when she looks like that.

Fury glances around the table at each of the Avengers. Phil follows his gaze, and his throat tightens up.

He was killed and he was out of control, and then he was lost and alone. And now all of these people, all of these heroes…They're sticking up for him. Ready to help him.

He looks at Clint.

Ready to love him. And to help him find himself.

As if he sees something in Phil's eyes, for the first time since they kissed, Clint smiles. He slides his hand down to clasp Phil's palm in both of his. "Also, with respect, Director Fury," Clint says. "You'll be taking Phil over my dead body, and probably the bodies of several people in this room. So unless Phil has any non-idiotic, self-sacrificing objections, I suggest you let us help him. Because if you don't, this is going to get very, very ugly."

"Are you threatening me, Agent?"

"With absolutely no respect," Stark says, mustache twitching up. "I'm pretty sure we all are."

All the tension in Phil's body flows out of him, and he curls over. Holding Clint's gaze, he presses his lips to their joined hands.

There's still bickering going on in the room around them, but with the decision practically assured now, Phil lets it all narrow down. Lets it dissolve until it's only Clint and him.

"What do you say, sir?" Clint asks quietly, leaning forward. "Any objections?"

"No." Phil slides his free hand into Clint's hair. He pulls him close, close enough that his breath washes out across his lips and their foreheads touch. "Some reservations, maybe." Rubbing his fingers into Clint's scalp, he exhales long and slow. "But no objections at all."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earning the 'M' rating today.

It's an addiction.

That's the only way Clint can explain it, this insatiable need to just touch and touch and touch. After all these years imagining it and now suddenly being allowed to…

He and Phil are sitting a little bit off to the side, tucked away in a corner while Fury and Stark argue about the proprietary nature of Stark's force field technology and the classified nature of all the drugs they had Phil on this past year. Clint tunes as much of it out as he can. All he wants to do is sit like this, to soak in the calm and the quiet and to listen to Phil's voice in his ear. To touch him.

He wants to touch him so much more.

And it's ridiculous. He should be angry, screaming Fury down with all the banked rage Stark is practically vibrating with. They took Phil away from him, didn’t even give them a chance to make him right. But he can't bring himself to yell or to so much as pull himself away from this corner, this embrace. He's been fighting and wandering through the dark for so long, and Phil has, too. They deserve this.

Phil seems to think so, too, if the heated glances he keeps giving Clint whenever he's not distracted by what's going on around them are any gage.

There's the sound of a throat clearing beside them. Keeping his hold on Phil's hands, Clint glances up to find Agent Thirteen standing there. It puts her on the wrong side of the barrier still set up in the middle of the room, and the look on her face says that she knows it.

Phil gives her a faint, professional smile.

"Agent."

"Agent," she replies. "I just…this past year."

Phil shakes his head. "I know you weren't behind this."

"I didn't like what they were doing, and I knew you were hurting." Her gaze skates to Clint and then back. "But my assignment—"

"Was to keep everyone around me safe. Honestly, I'm surprised they gave me as much lassitude as they did."

Her lips twitch upward, but her expression is still contrite. "Fury really did want you to get a chance at a real life."

"I know he did." Squeezing Clint's hand, Phil says, "It was just missing some things I couldn't live without."

She nods, seems about to turn away, and Clint should let her go. He's a mixed up ball of relief and rage, and she doesn’t deserve that. She does deserve one thing, though.

"Sharon?" Clint says.

She stops.

Shit, he's not good at this kind of thing. All the same, he keeps himself level as he says, simply, "Thank you."

Her eyebrow arches.

Shaking his head, he offers the only thing he can. "I don't agree with anything you did. But thank you anyway. For taking care of him."

Her smile bemused, she chuckles. "Agent Coulson did a fine enough job taking care of himself."

Clint's heart feels like it's swelling behind his ribs. Of course he did. All the pictures and the cranes and the midnight raids on grocery store thieves. He took better care of himself than anyone could. Bending, he kisses Phil's knuckles, only half-aware that Agent Thirteen is walking away.

Phil reaches up with his other hand to grasp Clint's neck, where he kneads gently at the tense muscles, scratching at Clint's scalp. It feels so good, warm and intimate, a touch the likes of which he hasn't had in so, so long.

He drops his head and feels the rumble in his throat as he says, low and quiet, "I can't wait to get you out of here."

The point of Phil's throat bobs. "Clint…"

It's the first moment of hesitation, the first crack since Phil agreed to stay. "What?"

He just rubs deeper at Clint's skin. "You heard what Fury said, when I dreamed…"

"You heard what Tasha said. When you're with me…"

"I don't know if I can take that chance."

Clint leans in closer, catches Phil's gaze and keeps it. Tries to show him exactly how completely he means it. "I'm not sure I can _not_ take that chance."

And it's deep and heavy, full of meaning and full of everything he wants right now.

Phil looks at him with just as much want, just as much need, and he said he loved Clint. With his chest bursting, his skin hot, Clint brushes his lips over Phil's, little fluttering kisses until he gets to his ear. Then, quiet as can be, he whispers, "Sir. Please. I've been waiting _years_ for you to fuck me."

In the next second, Phil's on his feet. Clint reels, fuck fuck _fuck_ , if he overstepped or read this wrong or…

But Phil's hand is still in Clint's, and while he's facing the room, posture as straight and commanding as ever, it feels like all of his attention is on Clint. Like beneath that polished exterior, there's something burning. Something more than blue and force and bright.

"Stark."

Stark whips around, brow furrowed. "Agent?"

"Agent Barton's quarters. They're shielded from the floors above and below?"

"Of course. Every floor is, I have a Hulk staying here—"

"And your AI can monitor Agent Barton's vital signs?"

A flash of understanding breaks across Stark's face, and he smirks, looking at Clint. "Why you dog you."

"Answer the question, Mr. Stark."

"Yes, yes, now go. If you need any intervention, we'll be up there with a force field generator and a barrel full of Hulk tranquilizer."

"Stark," Fury starts, "do you really think—"

Stark bristles. "We're doing this our way. And I for one am more concerned right now about us all getting nuked by unresolved sexual tension than I am about Legolas over there getting fried while they try to resolve it."

"And on that note…" Clint grabs Phil and drags him toward the door.

Only Tasha's standing there. He's worried for a second she'd going to stop them, but she just waves. "Have fun."

Jesus Christ.

With Phil's hand clasped in his, Clint makes a break for the elevator, and it's the best he's felt in over a year, maybe ever. They're alone together, and Phil's alive, and he's his.

The elevator doors slide open, then close behind them, and Clint presses Phil against the wall. He's careful to telegraph his movements—he's reckless but he's not an idiot, and Phil _is_ still a walking nuclear bomb—as he gets all of his body up against all of Phil's. He smiles so wide it hurts his mouth; it hurts his heart, thinking he gets to have this. Gets to keep it.

This time, touching Phil's face, Clint's the one to ask, "Are you real?"

"As real as you are."

Before either of them can really regroup or push this any further, the chime is sounding, and they're on Clint's floor. Clint steps back and lets Phil peel himself from the wall. He holds Phil's hand as he leads him to the door to his suite and presses his thumb against the lock. It springs soundlessly.

"We'll get your biometric added tomorrow," Clint promises.

Phil doesn’t question it, just follows Clint inside and lets the door swing closed behind them. He fixes Clint with a stare that burns right through him, and God.

"JARVIS?" Phil asks.

"Agent Coulson. Welcome back."

"You heard what I asked Stark back downstairs?"

"Beginning monitoring of Agent Barton's vitals as we speak. Would you also like me to notify the other Avengers in the case of unexpected energy pulses?"

"Yes, please."

"He won't have to," Clint insists.

"Every precaution."

"Whatever makes you sleep better at night, sir."

"I think I'm going to sleep plenty well."

And there's all this space between them, nearly a foot, but the air crackles. There's heat and intent, and Clint is unafraid.

He smirks. "Thinking I'm going to wear you out?"

Phil's expression softens. "Thinking I'm going to go to bed knowing who I am for the first time in a year. Thinking I'm going to go to bed with you."

Fuck.

"Damn right you are."

Clint takes the first step back toward his bedroom, but Phil drops his gaze for the first time since they got here. He looks around.

"You've been living your life."

"The best I could."

"I missed so much of it."

"Nah." Clint reaches out for Phil, wants him to be right here, and not in some lost time. Not anywhere else. "You were with me all along."

Phil takes his hand and this time he lets himself be led.

Clint's bedroom is dark and messy, just the way he left it. It's probably going to drive Phil mad, but he can't really bring himself to care.

As it is, Phil just shakes his head. "This is what happens when you move out of SHIELD?"

"This is what happens when I almost lose my mind trying to follow a trail of breadcrumbs."

Phil's face goes soft all at once. "They were for you."

And Clint can hardly breathe.

"You had to know that. The whole time, I kept…I kept seeing you. Out of the corner of my eye." He digs his nails into the tops of Clint's shoulders, hard enough to hurt. Clint likes it that it hurts. "I thought I was going crazy."

"You're not the only one." Clint crumples just a little. "I'm sorry it took me so long. When you were gone, I didn't know…I didn't find the first crane until just a little while ago, but as soon as I did, I knew. Stark helped me." And he's babbling now, but there's so much he's wanted to tell Phil. All this time, he's just been dying to talk to Phil. "All the things you did…the cranes and the pictures, and…you were trying to find your way home."

"Of course I was." He holds the back of Clint's neck and keeps him steady, keeps him where he can look straight into his eyes. "I was trying to find my way back to you."

"Phil…"

And he has to. He leans in and kisses Phil's soft mouth, licks in and tastes, and he can hardly believe it.

"You found me," Phil whispers.

Clint's lip trembles. "What can I say, boss? I was lost without you."

And Phil…Phil just cups his face. And he's so, so strong.

"Then that makes two of us."

…

…

It's not that Phil doesn't feel the ripples, isn't aware all the time of the energy deep inside his chest. It crackles and sizzles, and every time Clint kisses him or touches him, the azure winds around his heart. But instead of bursting out, it floods. It fills him.

"I'm going to be so good to you," Clint promises.

And God, but isn't that Clint? Always thinking he needs to convince people he's going to be better, that he's going to be worthwhile.

After all this time, how does he not know that Phil's known it all the while?

Instead of an answer, Phil kisses him silent and pushes him back toward the unmade bed. It's messy and it's Clint, and Phil wouldn't want it any other way. Pushing him down onto his back, Phil climbs up on top of him, straddling his waist and spreading his hands out across his chest.

For what seems like the longest time, they just look at each other.

Clint's the one to break them out of it first. He reaches up and starts tugging at the clothes Phil pulled on at some point in the chaos. They're not his own and they feel strange, but revealing himself like this in front of Clint feels even stranger. Good, but strange.

Clint grins. "Last time I saw you naked we were staying in that shithole in Guatemala. Remember?"

It takes a second, and the memories are fuzzy, but he does. "Slightly different context, Barton."

"What? Just because you were covered in mud…"

"I was still finding it in my hair for weeks. Ruined one of my best suits."

"You looked better without the suit anyway."

Phil shakes his head. "Were you taking liberties while I was decontaminating?"

"What can I say? I took what I could get."

There's something there. Some little edge of vulnerability. Phil kisses him, soft and slow. "You can have whatever you want, now."

At that, Clint pushes Phil's shirt off his shoulder, baring his chest. Clint's eyes go to Phil's for just a second and then down. His hand hovers over the scar.

The seam of it is glowing blue.

"Can I?"

Phil shivers. "I think so."

The power feels contained. It feels like Phil has it under control.

Clint's finger settle, tentative and ever so slightly shaking at the edge of the angry line. It feels like a fire, like burning and magic, but it tastes less like azure blue and more like love.

Clint's fingertips say, 'I'm sorry', his eyes say, 'I'm sorry', but his mouth says, "It's not as big as I thought it would be."

Phil shrugs. "Felt pretty big at the time."

Tracing the length of the scar, it's like Clint knits the ragged edges of it back together, like he's knitting Phil back together. The place where the spear broke through glows brighter and brighter, but all Phil feels is peace. He stills Clint's hand and kisses his mouth.

Just as slowly, Phil undresses Clint, spending his own precious minutes feeling the lines on his skin, finding the ones that are new. It's something he's always done, inventorying the broken places on his asset, but it's something more this time. It's about seeing what he missed.

Clint seems to recognize it for what it is.

"Botched op," he says as Phil traces a line of broken flesh on his arm. "First time out without you and I lost it. I…I didn't have the shot."

That gives Phil pause.

Clint's lips are an unhappy, raw line. "You weren't the only one who needed someone to ground him, apparently."

Phil swallows hard. He catalogs the rest of the changes to Clint's body silently, kisses them all. He undoes Clint's buckle and his fly and pushes his pants down.

He has to bite his own sounds back at the sight of Clint spread out like this, naked and hard and beautiful. He kisses a tiny scar at the crest of his hip, kisses his navel.

He takes the long, slick line of Clint into his hand and gives it a first, light-as-air stroke.

Clint nearly comes off of the bed. "Christ, Phil—"

"Shh." Phil gives the flushed, shining head a little lick, and it's been so long. He remembers what Clint told him, and he wants it too, wants it with everything inside of him. With gentle fingers, he slides his hand between Clint's cheeks, takes a testing stroke, dry, against his opening.

"Yes." Clint's head moves back and forth as Phil takes him deeper in his mouth. "I have—"

Phil doesn't stop, keeps touching and licking and sucking even while Clint's rolling, getting a hand into a drawer and pressing a bottle into Phil's hands.

He slicks his fingers and works Clint open, one finger and then two. It's hot, smooth as velvet, and everything inside Phil is glowing, _glowing_.

He looks down at himself as he pulls his fingers out and rises to his knees.

He's _glowing_. Blue like light and life beneath his skin.

But he's not afraid.

"It's—" Phil starts.

"—it's beautiful."

Clint's gaze goes from Phil's chest to his eyes and back again. He reaches out to touch, and the contact is a brilliant searing, is burning handprint into Phil's flesh, and he wants it there. Wants Clint seared into him just like the magic. Just like the pain.

"It feels…"

It feels like being reborn and like being alive. Like being in love.

"I trust you," Clint says.

Phil pushes the rest of his clothes off. He slicks his own length up, then falls to his hands and knees over Clint, kissing him like he'll die without his breath. The blue is seeping into Clint now, and Phil can feel it, can sense its edges, and it isn't violent or tearing. It's nothing meant to kill or hurt.

It's warm. As infinite as the stars and as small as this one, perfect moment.

Clint reaches for Phil, and the one brush of his hand against Phil's cock is almost too much, but Clint's opening his legs, lining Phil up.

"I love you," Phil gasps as heat envelops him. It's all tight and slick and better than he ever dreamed. When he's fully inside of Clint, he breathes and breathes and kisses the side of his face, touches his ribs and his cheek.

And Clint is burning. He is burning, brilliant, flaming with electric blue.

"I love you."

They're one in so many ways, bodies joined and energy flowing. Clint wraps around Phil, and with his arms braced to either side of Clint's head, Phil presses into him again and again and again.

And it's safe. It's safe.

He lets go, just a little. The azure burst is a slow wave, encompassing the both of them, a shell and a shield, and they're both inside of it, inside each other as surely as Phil is inside Clint. Like the moment Phil first believed that Clint was really here and really _real_ , he lets the energy surround them.

Clint opens his mouth, and the cosmos come out.

Pressing lips to lips, Phil seals the universe back into him. As the pleasure and the infinite all threaten to unravel, he touches sensitive flesh, and, elbows faltering, he whispers, "Please."

Clint slams his eyes shut and arches his back. The slits of his eyes are glowing blue, and Phil is cerulean flame, and there's the pulse. The screaming pulse, and then just Clint, choking Phil's name, the spill of wet warmth between their bodies and all over Phil's hand. Phil kisses his brow and presses his face against Clint's throat. Pushes and pushes and he's so deep. Clint flexes, and it's over.

The magic flares out and Phil empties, he pumps Clint full, and he's still trembling, still reeling with the force of climax.

The tidal wave of energy pulls back, leaving a gasping, yawning silence, the room cool and grey and dark.

But the magic isn't gone. It's just inside Phil like his love.

Where it's safe.

Where it's tethered to Clint like a pulse, where it's tasted his lover's flesh the way that Phil has, and it's so completely, totally, utterly under control.

When Phil's arms can't hold a second longer, he pulls out and falls to his back beside Clint. Clint makes a wordless noise of protest and hauls his naked form to lie against Phil's side, a leg over his thighs and a hand pressed tight against his heart.

For a few perfect, precious moments, Phil floats.

Clint shifts and drifts his hand across the now-flesh-colored scar. Brushes fingers along the softened length of Phil's cock.

"So," Clint says, lazy and mischievous all at the same time, "is that what it's always like for you?"

Phil can't help the burst of laughter.

And it's okay. It's all okay. He hugs Clint tight. All he can say, all he knows is…

"That's how it is when I'm with you."

Clint kisses his shoulder.

Apparently, that's enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue coming soon, but other than that, I think we're pretty much done. Thanks to everyone who's come along for the ride.


	10. Epilogue

_One year after that…_

Phil stands in line, alone, staring at the menu at another coffee shop in another no-nothing town. Not that he really needs to. He knows exactly what he wants.

"Next?"

With a thin little smile, Phil steps forward. "Good morning."

"Morning, sir."

"I'll have a large Americano and a—"

A hand insinuates itself into the space between Phil and the barista, a crisply folded twenty dollar bill held out between two fingers. "And a medium caramel mocha—"

"—with extra whipped cream," Phil finishes.

The woman glances between him and Clint—probably at the way Clint just puts himself inside Phil's space. How he puts himself into his sentences. Phil shrugs. What can he do?

After a second, she shrugs and takes the money. She holds the change out, and Phil accepts it. By force of habit, he folds a single into a little crane and drops it in the tip jar before taking Clint by the arm and stepping back.

Without directing his eyes away from the people working behind the counter, Phil smirks. "So how'd that whole 'waiting in the car' thing work out?"

"Sorry, sir. We got a call."

"Oh?"

"Yup."

"From?"

"Fury."

That gets Phil to turn around. He faces Clint, one eyebrow quirked in question.

Through mutual agreement, they haven't had a lot to do with SHEILD or Fury in the months since Phil's return. The occasional terrorizing of a city that they've had to coordinate their responses to, sure, but the Avengers are functioning autonomously now. For Fury to have called directly…

"Talk to me."

"Apparently the world's ending. Aliens, evil, you know the drill." Clint's flippant right up until he strokes his finger along the back of Phil's hand and leans in close. "Says he needs the big guy."

"So why didn't he call Bruce directly?"

"The other big guy."

Oh, hell.

Just in case, he asks, wincing, "Stark?"

"Try again. The really big guy."

Phil winces even harder against the ripple of energy moving through his chest. It knows when it's been called. He has it under control—he always has it under control these days. But some days are easier than others.

"Clint…"

"Shh." Clint pulls Phil in, dancing his fingertips up the placket of Phil's shirt to brush against the bare skin of his throat, above his tie. "You're an Avenger now, after all."

A little shiver makes its way along Phil's spine. There was a time he didn't belong with anyone, didn't belong anywhere, but he's part of the team now, even if on most excursions he's exclusively on support. He sits in a surveillance van, looking at all the feeds and all the angles and speaking into everyone's ear. Into Clint's ear, especially, while they're waiting or while Clint's bored.

And every now and then, as Stark would say…Phil suits up.

"All right."

The barista calls out their drinks, and Clint steps forward to grab them both. He presses the Americano into Phil's hand, then starts toward the door, speaking into his communicator and telling Natasha where to pick them up.

An hour later, the quinjet swoops in low over Manhattan, and sure enough, the world looks like it's ending. Again. Widow brings them down on a roof. They roll out, Cap taking point, and with a roar of repulsor-fire, Iron Man comes to land beside him.

But then, instead of flying off to take care of everything himself, Iron Man stomps over to Phil.

"You ready, Agent?"

Phil looks to Clint, who nods. The Avengers all have the portable force field technology Stark's been working on improving for the past year. They'll be safe enough.

Even though the force fields aren't the only thing they've been working on improving.

Radiant blue fills the centers of Phil's palms, and he can feel it like a tide held in check by his ribs and his heart and his love. Ever since he came back to the Avengers, they've been working toward this. To the point where Phil can walk like a normal man in the world.

And where he can unleash hellfire upon it when it needs saving. He's a weapon, all right. But he's a weapon and he's his own.

Phil huffs out an exhale. "Ready when you are."

"You kidding? I was born ready."

Phil looks right into Clint's eyes before Stark picks him up. There's one long, perfect moment when he feels utterly connected—connected to this man and to this world and to himself.

And then he's flying.

In his ear, there's a voice. There's Clint. "Agent? Be careful out there, you hear?"

It's the shaky moment that always happens, right on the edge like this, when the azure crackles and his skin feels like it's too thin to keep him in. "Keep talking to me?"

"Always."

Stark sets Phil down in the very center of a shitstorm of creatures. The air around the armor shimmers.

Phil opens his chest. He opens his heart.

"You got this, Phil."

He opens his eyes. He knows exactly who he is.

He's the man who rose from the dead and from the ashes of his own lost memory. He's the man who gained the power of a god by standing up to one. He's the man who loves Clint Barton and whom Clint Barton loves.

He opens his mouth, and his vision glows blue.

He is the power. He is the rage and fire.

He is Phil Coulson.

And he's here to save the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone. xoxo


End file.
